


are we in the clear yet?

by quick_ly



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: F/M, High School, I don't even know guys, Teenagers, i am just as confused as you must be, i started and then was cranking out a couple thousand a day, this just happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quick_ly/pseuds/quick_ly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What happens is that everyone else leaves. And then it’s just the two of them." Hero and John hanging out and becoming friends and realizing they actually like each other a lot more than expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. you can hear it in the silence

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is kind of really freaking weird. The longest thing I’ve ever written ever (not just NMTD – I seriously have not ever produced this many words for fic, or anything else for that matter), and it’s for a ship that I’m only half into, that won’t ever be canon and is also kind of fucked up. Like, I really like the idea of them, but I also acknowledge that they are also pretty problematic, and I’m not sure if I tackled them properly here, but yeah. I’m not going to try to justify where my creative muse went, which is Hero/John of the not-so-distant future, and also Hero still being kind of bitter. I’m still not completely satisfied (like, Hero is sort of overly bitter at the beginning, but that’s kind of the point? I try to justify it, but I don’t know if I’m just completely fucking with her character), but this is giant and has been sitting around for a bit, and it seems that some people are starting to fall for them, so what better time? Have a 23K Hero/John fic.
> 
> Beta-read by the lovely [wibbelkind](http://wibbelkind.tumblr.com/), who was so nice as to read over this giant thing and give me actual really good feedback (which you should also do, because I’m an unsure lady and don’t know if I got this right – like, I’m not sure if this is good work or if it sucks). Title taken from “Out of the Woods”, because like so many others I have fallen for Taylor Swift’s new album (and also this was what I was listening to when I started to ship these two, and it’s kind of my song for them?) Mostly canon, right up until “Nothing Much To Do” (guys it was in everyone’s head that Bea and Ben go abroad I DIDN’T SEE IT NOT HAPPENING!), and also doesn’t really work at all with any future Lovely Little Losers stuff, so yeah. Warning for… Hero/John in general, who I feel could possibly be a triggering ship for some people. Happy readings.

What happens is that Hero chooses to forgive, because hating them all forever seems too terrible, and also too hard. She makes a conscious choice, and it’s tough, and it nags at her, but it makes for a smooth end of the year, and she likes that. They have fun, do stupid things that young people do, graduate in spirit and go off to do whatever it is they’ll be doing with their lives.

She chooses to forgive because it seems like the best option, because holding onto all that anger will just brew more resentment, and Hero doesn’t want that. Everything has been so terrible lately and she needs it to stop, and if forgiving is the way to get that done, then so be it. It’s not fake, because she does _want_ to move on, wants to be able to preserve those friendships she held so dear. It’s just a little tactile and purposeful, putting in the effort to let some anger go, pushing down feelings that she knows won’t do anyone any good.

It’s not like they’re all going to be around for much longer, anyway. It’s just a few months of smiles and hugs, and then they’ll leave and go off to do their own things, and she’ll only see them on occasion for the rest of her life, those times when someone in their group feels that a reunion is in order and she can’t get out of it. She’ll hear about them from Meg, Ben, and Bea sometimes, who will mention them in passing, see them at a few weddings, and that’ll be it.

So why complicate the end of an era? Why not allow everyone to end on good terms, instead of bitter and angry and numb. Hero has always been good at thinking about others before herself, at seeing the good when she doesn’t necessarily have to. This is that, basically: choosing not to hold onto anger that’ll just make everything worse, when things have the potential to be great and fun. Choosing to be the mature one.

 

 

 

What happens is that everyone else leaves.

And then it’s just the two of them.

 

 

 

Hero can’t even begin to remember the first time she noticed him, Pedro’s sulky half-brother who appeared in her year when they were eight or nine. She probably thought he looked kind of depressed and sad, and was likely a little intrigued, but hardly fascinated. That’s how she had thought of him for the last few years, anyways; shy, angry, always in the shadows with that Cora girl. They were in a couple of classes together, and he’d usually sit somewhere in the back, only ever talking when the teacher called on him, and always with some kind of annoyance in his voice.

It’s not like he was exactly on her radar. John was just… there. He existed, and he didn’t hang with her group of girls. When Bea, and by extension Hero, became friends with Pedro, she learned a little more, but it wasn’t much. She learned that Pedro didn’t really like him, even if he couldn’t bring himself to admit it. She learned that nobody really liked him.

She’d sometimes say he was just shy, because that seemed about right. He wasn’t bad, exactly. He just didn’t like the attention.

Someone in her group would always correct her: not shy, but cruel. She never had the effort to argue with them.

 

 

 

He gives her a very genuine apology, the kind that she can tell he’s practiced for some time in the mirror, and she forgives, because that’s what Hero’s doing: forgiving so that everyone can move on. She smiles and pats his shoulder and offers a cookie, and pretends that it isn’t weird that they’re all suddenly hanging out like a group of merry friends. (Admittedly, though, Claudio’s presence gets her more, but she chooses to ignore this.)

It’s nice, she thinks, them all being buddies again. Nice, but not perfect and not forever and not real, but nice. Good and happy for now.

She wants to be the genuine one, the person who really feels it, but that doesn’t really stick. She’s still Hero, but at the same time, it’s a little harder to trust the twee-ness of it all. She can’t help but think that some of it rings false.

(She catches a glance of him when he’s not looking, staring over at the guys as they shoot food at each other, and the first thought that comes to her mind is that John is beautiful when he smiles. Really, very handsome. She would have noticed him sooner if he smiled more often.

He looks over and catches her staring, and their eyes lock for a moment. It gives her this weird kind of jolt.

Like everything else in her life lately, Hero pushes it right on down.)

 

 

 

Pedro holds this big party towards the end of break, a sort of _goodbye until next time_ kind of deal. They’ll all be off in a few weeks, for university and traveling and what not, and Pedro being the “all around great guy” he is apparently feels that the only way to celebrate is to throw a party where everyone gets raving drunk.

(Hero thinks it’s a fine idea, and tells everyone so, because it’s gotten to the point where they all seek her approval with anything that has to do with Pedro, Claudio, and John. It sounds like fun, and something that they’ll all have a good time at. It also sounds forced, something Pedro is doing partially out of guilt, like he feels he has to compensate for the last few months by being the greatest guy around. It doesn’t really matter much to her – she’s had her time with the people she loves, and after all, she’s also got another year before she’s out of high school – but Hero does him the courtesy of pretending that she’s really into it, that it sounds like a brilliant going away plan.)

It’s a lot like his costume party, a lot of dancing and a few hurt feelings and a bit more alcohol. Hero doesn’t even really want to go – sitting around as Claudio and Pedro try to make friendly conversation and everyone else at school avoids her out of guilt is not exactly her idea of a great Friday night – but she knows that if she doesn’t it’ll say something, and having everyone think she’s suddenly angry right at the end of the year would be worse than not attending. So she goes.

It’s stuffy, and noisy, and it brings back memories of before, when everything was so sweet and exciting and hopeful, the possibility of talking to Claudio, of having a great time with some of her favorite people (and even that memory is ruined, because she just remembers that Claudio actually spent the entire party sulking cause she danced with another guy, a guy whose identity she didn’t even know). Her and Meg and Ursula sit together for a while, and then it’s Beatrice, but she eventually sends them all away, since she knows they want to dance and drink and all that. She’s not angry, and doesn’t take it personal; she just isn’t interested in that tonight.

“Go be a terrible dancer with Ben,” she tells Bea, who has been sitting with her for like an hour.

She mocks ignorance. “What, a cousin can’t happily sit with their other cousin talking at a party? What kind of world do we live in?”

“A world where you _clearly_ want to go dance like an idiot with Ben, but don’t want to leave me alone,” Hero says with a smile. “It’s okay, I can have a good time by myself.”

Bea bites her lip, clearly conflicted. “You sure you’ll be okay on your own. Just cause Ben looks like a total dork, and I kind of want to join.”

“I’ve got a drink and people watching skills. I’ll be good.”

Bea smiles almost gratefully, kissing Hero on the cheek and in a moment tackling Ben on the dance floor, and it’s all very sweet, Hero thinks. Looking on at everyone having such a nice time, it’s all sweet and adorable, and if she just ignores everything else, she can even force herself to believe that’s all they are, a happy group of friends with no worries and troubles, who just love each other immensely. She misses actually believing in it, but that’s in the past, after all. No use trying to cling onto it.

And then she spots him.

John’s sitting alone in a corner just like her, nursing a beer and kind of staring off. It surprises her a bit that she even notices him; he has this quality about him where he can just sort of fade into the background, without anyone realizing. Hero only knows this now because he’s suddenly on her radar, in a way that he wasn’t ever before and still isn’t really with the others. It’s made her think that’s he’s always been there, she just hadn’t seen.

He doesn’t exactly look like he’s having a good time, but at the very least he’s out and about, she supposes, and he doesn’t seem to be particular unhappy either. John is the kind of person she can almost study; he’s like a mystery, this person who was always around but she just never saw, because she didn’t care. She doesn’t really care now either, if she’s being honest, but he does intrigue her a little more, something about the whole _convincing the entire school she slept with Robbie_ thing nagging at her (funny how that works).  She can tell herself that she’s forgiven him, and that it’s over and they’ve moved on, but something is still there, a bitterness that she can’t quite push away.

Hero wants to not care anymore, but it’s not that easy.

And of course, _of course_ he notices her staring, he makes a sort of weird face before tentatively getting up and moving over towards her, like she had been trying to signal him over. She wasn’t – she was trying to people-watch and drink alone and maybe creep a little bit, but having John come over and actually have a conversation with her was not the intention. She doesn’t need that in her life, and doesn’t really want it, because forgiveness it nice and sweet, and she did choose it and all, but tonight – tonight she doesn’t want it. She wants to sit in the corner and nurse her drink alone and be a little bitter. Hero has had a shit year; she thinks she deserves as much.

“Hi.” He says it awkwardly, carefully, like he’s not sure if this is allowed. (A part of Hero feels like it shouldn’t be.)

“Hey.”

A beat. Silence. “Do you mind if I sit here.”

“Be my guest.”

He sits down with caution, the two of them on opposite sides of a weird bench that Hero is pretty sure Pedro’s mom thinks is lovely, and that John detests, and they just sort of stay there. She isn’t sure why it is he came over at all – whether or not it was boredom or interest or guilt, but it feels weird. They’ve never had a real conversation – the closest they ever came was his apology – and they aren’t exactly friends. They’ve talked a little more lately, since Pedro always brings him along nowadays, but that’s really it. They don’t have a lot in common, she figures, and it’s not like with even Claudio or Pedro, where they were kind of friends before everything went down. The everything being shit that John caused, after all.

The silence goes on, and Hero wonders how long she’ll have to sit there before it won’t be rude to get up and leave, find wherever a bookshelf is in this house and read alone in a corner, away from it all.

They both take sips of their drinks.

 

 

 

“So I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the party wasn’t your idea.”

He smiles just a little bit. “Parties like this aren’t really my idea of fun, but…”

“But Pedro thought it would be really great,” she interjects.

“Exactly. And I… don’t really want to interfere any more with his life than I already have.” He looks down, and Hero tries to tell if he’s manipulating her, but it seems unlikely. She’s not with Claudio anymore, so he’s got no reason to.

“Where’s Cora? Didn’t you guys hang out at the last party?”

John just shrugs his shoulders, and points over to where Cora is talking to some guy, and smiles. “She’s been staring at him for weeks. I’m not about to interrupt that.”

This surprises Hero, because she never even thought they were very good friends. She always got the impression that they just tolerated each other. “That’s very nice of you.”

“It can happen.”

For a second, she can’t tell if he’s being self-deprecating, or manipulative, or what have you, but then he gives her this wink and a takes a sip of his beer, and it dawns on her that this was a joke, that he’s making fun of himself.

A part of her wants to laugh, but doesn’t, just gives him this tiny little smile. He doesn’t deserve her laughs.

 

 

 

“God, do they know that they both look like complete buffoons?”

Hero giggles, despite herself. “They relish in it.”

“This is why I don’t dance.”

“I’m sure you’re fine.”

“I’m not, and I’m not a buffoon, so I don’t dance.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You sure you’re not a buffoon?”

 

 

 

“You can’t compare them! It’s just not allowed!”

“Why can’t I? Why am I not allowed to compare _Blackadder_ and _Monty Python_?”

John face-palms. It makes her smile. “They’re completely different.”

“Are they though? Are they really?”

“Yes!”

“John, I’m sorry to say, but I think you are taking this a little too seriously.”

“You’re not allowed to compare _Blackadder_ and _Monty Python_. It’d be like if I tried to compare Mumford and Sons to Fife and the Drums. You can’t do it.”

“Okay, well, that’s completely different.”

“How?”

“Those two bands have nothing in common, besides being two all-male bands. _Blackadder_ and _Monty Python_ on the other hand…”

“Oh my god!”

 

 

 

“I’m just saying, I think you’re not giving him enough credit.”

“I think you’re being crazy.” She embellishes it to get the point across.

“He’s got talent, and skill. He’s honed his craft.”

“But to say that he’s better than–”

“I didn’t say that.”

Hero raises an eyebrow, taking a large sip of her drink. “You implied it.”

“I implied nothing, you’re just reading too far into it.”

“Whatever you say.”

A beat passes, where they both sulk in their mock anger.

“He’s definitely better.”

“John!”

 

 

 

"It didn't have anything to do with you, you know,” he says. “What happened." This comes later, when the party has died down and people either too drunk to function or having sex. They’re not, but they are tired and their drinks are gone, and how exactly it is she’s spent the last three hours making conversation with John, Hero has no idea.

"Bullshit." It comes out like a reflex.

"It didn't. It was about me and my issues with Pedro, and then it was about Claudio and how insecure he is. But never you."

She lets a beat go by, her anger brewing, because she knows this is how he justifies it to himself. That it wasn't supposed to be about her, that things just happened and he couldn't have foreseen any of it. And maybe that was the case, but whatever. He doesn’t get a free pass just because she wasn’t the intended victim. It still hurt. "Yeah, well, for something that wasn't about me, it sure did mess with my life."

They're both a little surprised by this, because Hero is never bitter. Hero forgives and moves on and understands. Hero doesn't let the past interfere with her future. And maybe in the back of her head she hasn't quite let it all go, but that's for her to keep to herself. She doesn't want anyone else to see.

John nods his head a little, though, and bites his lip. She can tell he's trying to think of some way to reply, and is coming up short. "Well, if it's any consolation, it fucked me up a little too."

She doesn't even think before the words fall out of her mouth. "It is."

 

 

 

They don’t talk for the rest of break. Why would they?

 

 

 

She sees him the first day back at school, dressed mostly in black as usual and walking in the hallway with Cora. It seems weird, to see him again, but she feels like she’s said goodbye to that whole group of people for the time being. They’re off doing whatever and she’s here, mostly being alone (save for Verges and Dogberry) and reading and ignoring the way people stare, because they still feel guilty and weird.

She knew he was going to be in school, of course. It just throws her off a little. But they don’t wave or smile when they see each other, just avoid eye-contact (she chooses the classic _runs hand through hair at the exact moment you pass_ maneuver) and move along, as though they’ve never talked before, and it feels about right. Hero went through years without caring about John Donaldson. No reason to start now.

 

 

 

This is how she sees their relationship going from now until forever. This is where she feels comfortable.

This isn’t how things go. As it turns out, she couldn’t have been any more wrong.

 

 

 

The school year starts just about as normal as ever, Hero’s only big change being that she suddenly doesn’t really have any friends, at least that she would be close with. Dogberry and Verges are around, of course, and are constantly showing themselves to be more than happy to hang out with her, but they’ve also got their own things going on, and she doesn’t want to mess with that. Most everyone else is friendly, but she can tell it’s out of guilt, so Hero doesn’t exactly latch onto any of them as potential friends.

After everything, last year had saw her in a lot of solitude. That comes in handy here.

At the beginning, she spends most of her time in the library, reading everything and anything she can get her hands on as simply a way of getting through the day without dying of boredom. She has a little corner that she adopts as her own, deep enough in that the librarians never bother her (though they are a lovely pair of women), and neither do any of the students. Her days become this sort of solitary routine, where she goes to classes, slips into the library during whatever free time she has, and leaves right before the next class begins. They’re not technically supposed to eat in the library, but the ladies don’t notice, and Hero doesn’t make a mess, so she usually reads during lunch instead of going outside, where she’ll occasionally hang out with Verges and Dogberry, and it’s all very bland and mundane, but it suits her. She likes the quiet and small now, she likes being alone. After the year she’s had, Hero can’t quite get enough of it.

And if on occasion she sees John in the hallway, and they have that awkward eye-contact thing that they always seen to have, she chooses to brush it under the rug. Her forgiveness still stands, yes, but she doesn’t have to make the effort, to go out of her way to be nice. He has a life and she has hers, and they hardly ever interjected before and now there’s even less reason for them to. Cora will sometimes smile when they pass, which Hero finds sweet but also a little insincere – another guilt-ridden person trying to make up for themselves – and besides that, for all intents and purposes they don’t know each other.

She’s happy with it. She knows how to ignore John Donaldson.

 

 

 

What happens is that three weeks into school, once they’ve been playing the avoidance game for some time, Hero and John get paired together on a big history project, the kind that takes lots of time and energy and effort.

At the time it feels like some sort of cruel joke, that of the twenty-some students in her class, Hero is partnered with the only person she’s rather not be.

Now it seems a little like fate.

 

 

 

“We should probably meet up sometime this weekend, to figure out all the details.”

“Okay.” He hasn’t said much for the whole twenty minutes they’ve been talking, supposedly making up a schedule and hashing out some of the easy stuff, but really just staring at each other awkwardly. They’re doing a project on one of Shakespeare’s plays – _Hamlet_ – because Hero likes Ophelia and _Romeo and Juliet_ was taken.

“And then we’ll probably want to meet once or twice a week, just so that we can make sure everything is in order.”

“Sounds good.”

Ugh. She can’t get anything out of him. “So, do you want to meet at my place or yours?”

He shrugs. “I don’t care.”

“Well… Leo is coming home this weekend, so…”

“So we’re doing it at my house.”

“I wasn’t trying to say that,” she defends, but it’s hopeless.

“We’re doing it at my house,” he says, and there’s something about the determination in his voice that tells her that’s the end of it. John has no interest in coming in contact with her brother. Frankly, she understands him.

“Okay, I’ll come round at one or two on Saturday.”

“Sounds good.”

The bell rings then, and he’s off in a second, slugging his backpack over his shoulder and stepping out of the class before most people have put away their pencils. It’s all very smooth and routine, like he’s spent years mastering the art of escaping situations without notice. Hero thinks some people would be impressed by it, or that it would inspire some sort of pity for his sad life. It doesn’t make her feel anything, besides the small tint of annoyance.

 

 

 

Her and Bea (and technically Ben) Skype that night, the two somewhere in Rome, and Hero doesn’t mention the project or John. It’s mostly Bea talking about how gorgeous the city and the entire trip have been, and when the conversation does turn to Hero, she just says that things have been boring, normal. Everything is basically business as usual.

He doesn’t warrant a mention, she tells herself. A mention to Beatrice would imply that he matters.

(And maybe, there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to bring him up because she hasn’t fully analyzed the situation yet, because it’s still fresh and weird and _hers_ , and she doesn’t need the rest of the group weighing in on how she should feel. She really doesn’t want Bea telling her how much of an ass he is, how she is to text her the moment he starts acting up. The whole thing is small and stupid, and does not require any outside input.

All it has to do with is him and her and William Shakespeare. That’s it.)

 

 

 

On Saturday at exactly 1:15, he opens the door on a single knock, and she wonders if he was waiting or just has super-sonic hearing.

The simple act of being in the house means nothing to her – she’s been there plenty of times before, knows all the ins and outs of it. It’s not like some weird walk through uncharted territory; she knows this place, it’s familiar to her. She doesn’t have to be the girl being led through a house she’s never seen.

But his actual room is different, probably the one part of the house she’s never seen. Its right in the middle of the hallway, this sort of detour as you’re walking down, and it immediately screams John to her, even if she doesn’t actually know him that well. A couple of posters hanging on the wall, a lot of black but also not too much (like it doesn’t overpower the room, but it’s also clearly a presence). Hero feels like, if she was given a series of rooms and asked to pick which one was his, she’s choose this one in a heartbeat. It’s like a character picture, but instead it’s a whole room.

He offers her a chair, and sits on the bed.

“So…” she starts, taking her binder out of her bad, “ _Hamlet_.”

He’s on the edge of his bed, rolling some sort of ball in his hands. “Right.”

She sighs. He’s obviously not going to be any help here. “Okay, well, I read over the syllabus, and we’re supposed to make a powerpoint, create a diagram, do a dramatic reading, write a paper… You’ve read it, right?”

“The syllabus?”

“No, the play.”

He looks at her like she’s an idiot. “Yes, of course I’ve read the play. Why do you think I wanted us to pick it?”

“I don’t know, it’s kind of easy. I mean, as far as Shakespeare goes.”

“ _Hamlet_ isn’t easy – it’s one of the greatest plays in history, but it isn’t easy.”

“Well yeah, but it’s so famous, and there are like a million movie version and…”

He seems annoyed with her, like she’s just insulted his intelligence. And maybe she has, but whatever. Hero doesn’t exactly think he deserves any better (she can’t help it – as kind a person as she tries to be, consideration for his feelings isn’t at the top of her priority list).

“So you’ve read the play.”

“I’ve read the play.”

“Great.”

They lock eyes, but it’s not like before, when she couldn’t handle it and tried to run away. It’s giving her a kind of jolt, and she doesn’t care, but she’s sure that it’s giving him the same feeling, and she wants that; she wants him to feel uncomfortable.

She pulls out the syllabus and a pen.

“So what do we want to start with?”

 

 

 

This is how it goes for a while.

Meeting up, going over things in their rooms. Making comments at the other and trying not to take it personally when they come flying right back.

Hero’s never had a relationship like this, something so clearly antagonistic that she willingly chooses to engage in. She never saw the point in it. She still doesn’t, but to her, it’s not as if she’s choosing whether to argue or not – she’s simply doing the only thing that comes natural. Engaging.

It surprises her how much she actually finds a weird kind of satisfaction it in. It surprises her how much she excels in it.

 

 

 

She smacks the paper down in front of him while he’s reading during lunch. He looks up at her like she’s a crazy person, taking out his earbuds as slowly as possible.

“What?” Hero’s pretty sure she’s never heard so much annoyance in a single word. It weirdly fuels her.

“We can’t use this.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“ _This!_ ” She exclaims, holding up the paper with both hands so that he can clearly read it. He still seems confused, so she sits down “The source you found about what Shakespeare was doing while he was writing _Hamlet_. We can’t use it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was doing a little research on it, and I found out that it was taken from a biography that the majority of scholars have ruled as false.”

“So that means…”

“We can’t use it.”

John takes only a moment to take it in, before shrugging and having a bite of his apple, going back to reading his book. “Alright, fine. We won’t use it.”

“John, no,” she says, snatching the book out of his grip. “We already planned most of our powerpoint around that source. We’re going to have to redo the whole thing.”

“Okay, we’ll redo it. Give me my book back.”

“I know you don’t really care, but I would really like an A, since this is worth 50% of our grade.”

“I want an A too, now give me the book.”

“Well it really doesn’t seem like it, since you didn’t bother to check the validity of your sources and–”

“Hero!” He exclaims, intense annoyance in his voice (it oddly satisfied her). “We’ll meet up on Saturday to redo the project. The powerpoint isn’t due for three weeks, so we’re fine. Now may I please have my book back?”

She gives him a look, because he is being entirely too casual about the whole thing. And is clearly making her out to be the crazy person here, as though caring about their project so much means she’s out of her mind.

She’s not out of her mind. She just wants a good grade.

“Fine. I’ll come over Saturday morning.” She starts to gather her paper, giving him back his book. “Wait – you’re reading _The Bell Jar_?”

He shrugs. “I like Sylvia Plath.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a fan.”

“Well, you don’t actually know me that well.” He says it in a way that’s completely calm, but it still somehow feels biting to her.

“I guess I don’t.”

“Yeah.”

“Alright then.”

“Sup nerds,” Cora says, strutting up to the table and sitting down like she’s been there the entire time, as though they’re friends who do this all the time – sit around eating lunch while having meaningful conversations. Not that what they’re discussing actually means anything. “What are we talking about?”

“Shakespeare.”

“Sylvia Plath.”

“So… books?”

There’s this awkward moment where they’re all staring at each other: Cora and Hero, Cora and John, Hero and John, Cora just staring as they stare at each other. It’s all very whimsical, she thinks. Like something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie.

“So I’ll see you on Saturday?”

“You’ll see me on Saturday.”

 

 

 

They spend all of Saturday huddled up in his room working on the powerpoint, because agreeing on anything is apparently impossible for them. It takes them twenty minutes to settle on the font, hours to actually work on the project to the point where all the information is accurate, another hour to find good pictures, and thirty minutes in between choosing what kind of pizza toping they want, because John is evidently unable to make any decisions ever.

And then they just go with plain. The irony of all this does not escape her, even if she doesn’t have the effort to care by the time she leaves at 8:30, tired and sick of how familiar it all is – his room and his house and his voice. That kind of familiarity that comes with spending a good straight nine hours with a person, arguing over minuscule details in a high school powerpoint presentation.

The absurdity of it all only occurs to her once Hero is driving home, and it hits harder than expected. It didn’t feel like nine straight hours. It hardly felt like three.

It hurts when she closes her eyes and sees his room.

 

 

 

The thing about change is that it doesn’t really make itself known, unless you’re looking for it. Things happen and morph, and then afterwards you look and say, “there, that’s when things started to change”. It’s never completely accurate, because change can’t ever be pinpointed down, but at the very least it’s recognizable. You can look at a situation at one point, and then flash forward and look at it again, and you can see how things were different, even if at the time it seemed like nothing at all. I used to like that band and then I didn’t. I didn’t understand math and then I did. I hated that person, and now I don’t.

Change doesn’t shout out at you and ask if it’s okay. “Things are starting to move in this direction – are you cool with that?” It doesn’t bang hard on drums so that you know it’s happening. It just does, and later on if you feel uncomfortable with it, you can maneuver it again, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t ever happen.

Which is all to say: things start changing.

 

 

 

So out of nowhere, her and Cora becomes friends.

It’s not technically out of nowhere, she supposes. They’ve been on friendlier terms since last year, and even before then, it’s not like they ever hated each other (then again, before last year, it’s not like Hero could ever imagine hating anyone, but that is not the point). And they kind-of-know-each-other-a-little-bit, which means a lot when you’re in high school, and all your other friends have graduated and are off doing their own things.

So rationally, it’s not sudden. But it feels like it.

It starts when they partner up in maths together, because they don’t know anyone else and are also both equally terrible. And they kind of get on, she thinks. Cora is pretty dark, and Hero is all sunshine and daisies, but Cora has also been trying to be nicer lately, and Hero is slightly more cynical then she used to be, so it works. And then they start sitting together in all the classes they have together, because it’s high school and allies are key and it’s early enough in the year that it’s not totally weird for them to change their seats. So yeah.

And then they start eating lunch together sometimes, because as much as Hero enjoys her solitude, she’s got a lot of it, and company can be nice, and also she’s pretty sure the librarians are starting to notice she’s been eating there during lunch, and she’d rather not be kicked out so early in the year.

And after that they start sometimes hanging outside of school, because yes, Hero likes her alone time, but she also went from have a whole group of friends to basically none, and it’s weird. And her and Cora get along pretty well – better than she would have expected. And it’s nice, having a pretty close friend again. She missed it.

Sometimes John is there, when they’re eating lunch or talking in the hallways, but he doesn’t say much, aside from a snide comment here and there. Cora and John are still friends, but Hero gets the impression that it’s been weird since last year. And Hero and John most certainly are not friends, despite the amount of time she has spent in his room.

But yeah. Hero and Cora becomes friends. That happens.

 

 

 

“Where are the lovebirds these days?”

They’re hanging out after school, working on homework and chatting but really just Facebook stalking the old group. It’s something that Hero never does on her own these days – there’s something weird, she thinks, about learning about the lives of her most important people through a website, but Cora had thought it would be a fun idea and Hero didn’t exactly care that much, far less interested in her math homework anyways. They’ve landed on Bea’s profile, which is currently just a load of pictures of her and Ben visiting various gorgeous places. It’s both adorable and kind of sickening.

“The US,” she says, scrolling through all her updates. “They’re going to New York and Washington, DC, and then from there Canada.”

“Canada?”

“Apparently it’s very important to Ben.”

“Right,” Cora says with an eye roll and a smile. Hero can never tell whether she’s disgusted or charmed by them, but she thinks it’s a combination of both. That’s kind of how it is for Hero these days, anyway: they are her favorite people, and the fact that they’re so in love makes her ecstatic. But she’s also just a little bit grossed out by love at the moment. It’s a byproduct of being fucked over so badly. “So what’s they’re plan, exactly? Travel to as many cool places as possible before their time runs out?”

“Basically. They’re having a good time playing the high-school-couple-travels. Bea’s joked that this is them getting cultured before they go off to uni, so that they can compete with all the smart people.”

“Sounds exciting.”

Hero shrugs her shoulders. “If they’re into it. Personally, I think I want to just like pick a few places when I go abroad, so that I can really get to know them. I don’t really see the pointing in visiting a city if you can’t really take it in.”

Cora laughs at this, giving Hero this weird look of surprise. “God, that sounds like something John would say.” She says it so seriously, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and it bugs Hero to no end.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh god, just the whole, appreciating things that are important and shit. It’s very John Donaldson.”

“Or very Hero Duke.”

“Whatever. He’d still totally say that.” She doesn’t say it in a mean way, or like Hero should take it as an insult. She doesn’t really say it like anything at all, just a little thing that amuses her – that Hero and John have something in common, when on paper they’re complete opposites. It doesn’t actually hold any meaning for Cora, Hero can see; it’s something that in the moment makes her smile, but that she’ll forget about in a second when they move onto something else.

It’s not supposed to mean anything for Hero either. It’s not supposed to bug her like crazy for the rest of the afternoon, or nag at her as she tries to fall asleep that night. It’s supposed to be a half second eye-roll and a _fuck you_ , and then forgetting about it and moving on to something new.

Hero looks down at her math homework, a bunch of uncertain numbers thrown together pretending like they mean something.

She feels red hot with anger.

 

 

 

Change never tells you when it’s coming:

One day, he tells a stupid joke while they’re working on the project. It has her laughing all night.

She doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, but there doesn’t seem like anything to notice.

This should have been her first sign.

 

 

 

“I don’t even understand why you’re trying to tell me we should do this scene. It has more than two people, and I’m pretty sure there’s only two of us.”

“It’s the most important scene in the play.”

“That’s debatable.”

John sighs heavily, loudly flopping onto his bed. “No it’s not! The final scene in _Hamlet_ is without a doubt the most important scene. It’s not my fault that you can’t see that.”

They’ve been doing this for a while now, sitting around trying to decide which scene to do for their presentation (it’s supposed to be a read-along, where they act it out for the class) and getting absolutely nowhere, because it’s the two of them and as such they are incapable of coming to any decisions easily. Hero’s had to figure this out the hard way.

“I don’t care what you say, we can’t do that scene. The syllabus says nothing about bringing in extra people for the read through, so I see no possible universe in which we could even do it. Unless you’re suggesting we each play multiple parts.”

He shoots her dagger-eyes, sitting up in his bed. “Fine, we don’t perform the most important scene in _Hamlet_ in a presentation on _Hamlet_. What’s your great suggestion then?”

“I say we do the break-up scene between Hamlet and Ophelia. It’s made for two people, and it works.”

“Oh come on, everyone always does that.”

“No, everyone always does _to be or not to be_. And I’m pretty sure half of our class hasn’t even read the play, so we don’t want to spoil it for them, now do we?” John gives her this look that says he really doesn’t care whether or not they ruin it, and she suppresses the feeling that agrees with him. “The break-up scene will be easy for them to understand, and easy for us to act out. It’s perfect for a high-school reenactment.”

He looks annoyed for only about a second more, but then relaxes, because neither one of them give enough of a shit about their classmates not knowing Shakespeare to care, and going into some big thing about the decline of the English language or whatever is not exactly their style.

She appreciates it; she appreciates that he’s not giving her a speech about how much smarter he is than the kids in their class.

“Fine, we’ll do the break-up, as long as it doesn’t involve me actually dressing in tights. I don’t care about the grade that much.”

He looks down then, flipping through his copy of the play, and there’s just something about it that is so concentrated – too concentrated, like he’s actually forgotten that she’s still there.

“I’m not making any promises.” She says it deadpan, staring right at him, so that when he looks up surprised, their eyes meet, and she can see a glimmer of something in him that wasn’t there before. Shock, admiration, whatever. It’s not like what she said was particularly witty or funny, or that she’ll be winning any awards for her grand sense of humor, but it’s kind of a surprise, for both of them. It’s kind of threatening, in a pretend way. Kind of trying to make banter. In some alternative universe where they’re different people, she’d even believe it could qualify as flirting.

That’s not what she’s going for. The aim was to beat him at being an arsehole, is all.

John’s mouth tugs into a smile, their eyes locked, and it lasts for just a second too long. None of it is particularly out of the ordinary exactly, or at least it doesn’t have to be, but then that moment lasts just the tiniest bit too long, and suddenly it is.

They don’t do these things. They don’t make sly jokes and then share long looks. Sometimes they joke and sometimes they look, but never together, and never at the same time. And she doesn’t really get it, because she’s never had anything like that with another person, looks that mean nothing that just go on for way too long. It’s befuddling.

In future, she’ll call it a connection.

 

 

 

 

So Will Carlson has been in their grade since forever, a sort of all round great guy for their year. Good marks, does great on the soccer team, that kind of guy. Hero has known him since before she can even remember, this kind of background presence that has been there for the entirety of her educational career. He’s never been on her radar exactly, but he’s always existed. Everyone knows who Will Carlson is. Will Carlson is supposedly the man.

And he’s also known for throwing major parties, the kind of black-out crazy gigs that everyone is talking about the next day. Hero’s never been, always too afraid and too young and also just generally not interested, but she’s heard things (mostly from Meg, who will normally make an appearance), and they don’t really sound that extreme in terms of high school parties. Lots of dancing, lots of booze, lots of people doing things they’ll probably regret in the morning. Not exactly her style.

So what happens is he throws a party, like he always does. And Hero’s not even going to go, because she never has and lacks any desire to and why exactly would she? Spending her Friday night huddled up in her room with a good book and a stolen bottle of wine sounds a lot more appealing than being surrounded by a bunch of drunk people trying to hit on her. She doesn’t need to waste a night with all that.

But then Cora starts bugging Hero to go with her, cause she wants to check it out but doesn’t want to go alone, and it starts to seem like not the most terrible idea in the world, at least compared with other things Hero has been subjected to. And like, parties like that aren’t really her scene, but she’s also never actually been to one so crazy before, and maybe she’ll actually like it? Maybe it’ll end up being her cup of tea.

Hero has been spending a lot of her weekends sitting in bed with a book and sips of wine (and occasionally a little TV). A single party won’t kill her, she decides. It’s not like it’s going to change her life.

 

 

 

So the party isn’t exactly a great idea.

It’s not bad, it’s not terrible. Nothing monumentally negative happens, so at the very least she’s got that going for her at the end of the night. No one dies, and nothing catastrophic and scarring happens, which is honestly more than Hero could say for some parties she’s been to. On that front, the party does pretty damn good.

Still… it’s not great. Which is to say that things happen, things that maybe don’t need to happen, things that maybe would have been perfectly fine never happening ever, and just hiding away for the rest of eternity.

So. Hero and Cora arrive an hour or so in, at which point most people are drunk or at least a little buzzed and hanging out on the dance floor, and generally it lives up to her grand expectations of what a high school party would be: loud, messy, people sprung all about. It’s not that far off from Pedro’s parties, except a little wilder, and it takes Hero about fifteen minutes to decide that she wasn’t missing much. Cora and her hang out for a while, but then the guy Cora likes walks in and starts talking to her, and Hero plays the role of the nice friend who has to go to the bathroom and never comes back. So then she’s left on her own, wandering through the house avoiding drunk people and nursing a beer.

So from the get-go it’s never great. From the start she’s never disappointed in not going to enough of these things. The party is never grand, or out of this world, or spectacular. It’s just kind of there.

And then of course she sees him.

It’s just like before, with him sitting off in the background, sipping a drink and basically just staring at people. He’s definitely more out of place than before, in one of his black sweaters and also completely sober, but then again she doesn’t exactly fit in herself.

He seems bored. She gets it. But he also doesn’t notice her this time, too busy looking out onto the dance floor with something like admiration but also very passive, and maybe it’s Hero apathy or whatever, but it bugs her. It bugs her enough that she decides to do something about it.

“I didn’t know you were friends with Will.” She’s strutted over to him, seating herself down beside him, because they may not like each other but they do know each other, and at this point that’s all that matters.

“Cora said I should go, and I wasn’t doing anything, so…”

“You thought spending your night here would be fulfilling?”

“Basically.” John doesn’t ever make any kind of move to be surprised by their recent conversation, and Hero secretly likes it. She isn’t in the mood to defend herself. “And you’re here because?”

“Cora said I should go.”

“And apparently whatever Cora says goes.”

They take sips of their drinks at the same time, and it feels like before, at the other party, only then they were just to people who knew each other but didn’t really, who felt awkward and weird around each other and weren’t sure what to do. Now they actually know each other.

It doesn’t occur to Hero until this very moment that they actually know each other very well at this point. They’ve spent hours upon hours with each other, talking and working and sometimes joking. He knows her room well enough to go anywhere in it. She once almost fell asleep on his bed. She knows his weird quirks and habits, and he probably knows her, and it’s not like she ever asked for it but she does.

This is when it occurs to her that John Donaldson is kind of a part of her life. And if it were any other situation, she would have ran, but it’s late and they’re at a party and she’s a little tired, and the reality of it all hasn’t quite sunken in. Instead she goes for conversation.

“So you’re a fan of Sylvia Plath?” 

 

 

 

Cora doesn’t ever find them, because she’s talking to the guy she really likes, and had been told not to worry, so she doesn’t.

They don’t talk to anyone else, because they’re just a bit too sober and secluded and everyone else is slightly afraid to approach, and they also don’t actually have too much of an interest in socializing with other people. They drink and talk outside for a while, and then it gets noisy, and then they drink and talk in the bathroom.

They don’t leave until late, once they’ve sobered up enough to actually drive home. John gives her a ride, arranged earlier in the night when Cora texted saying she was giving her dude-friend a lift home, and asking if Hero was ready to leave. She wasn’t really, and John offered, so he gives her a ride home.

They don’t talk on the drive.

 

 

 

“Okay, be completely honest with me: what is your favorite Shakespeare play?” He asked her this when they were in the bathroom, pretty buzzed but also not drunk-drunk. They’d been talking for an hour or so, mostly just discussing literary opinions, because it’s something they can do, that they know how to talk about, that they feel comfortable talking about. There are too many subjects between them that she feels would be dangerous to veer into, that would require too much honesty or else not any at all, but literature is safe. Literature is where she thinks they can get the furthest.

“Oh, god um -- I think _A Midsummer Night's Dream_? I don’t know, I was in a production of it as a kid and I just fell in love. Mostly for the fairies, but still -- I love it.”

He chuckled, smiling down at his drink. “Wow, I was not expecting that from you.”

“What did you think I was going to say? _Romeo and Juliet_?”

He’d quirked an eyebrow, the bastard. “It wouldn’t exactly have surprised me, is all.”

“And why is that?”

“I don’t know, I thought you were into the whole _love at first sight_ thing.” He’d shrugged his shoulders, taking a sip of his drink. “It seemed very you.”

“Well, I don’t believe in that, so.” She’d sort of given him a shrug of her own, a kind of _sorry that you’re so wrong buddy_. “ _Romeo and Juliet_ is just about two teenagers who are so infatuated with each other that they decide to throw any logic they might have once had to the wind. Doesn’t really get it for me.”

He’d raised an eyebrow. “What about _young love_?”

“It’s not real, I don’t think. When you’re that young, you can’t know if you’re really in love with someone.” He laughs a little, agreeing with her. “And besides, their relationship was superficial anyways, which I think was probably Shakespeare’s whole point. They don’t even know each other -- they’re attracted to each other and think the other is nice, but that’s it. He made it a stupid relationship on purpose to make a point.”

“That point being?”

“Teenagers are idiots.”

He’d looked at her funny then, and she could tell that he wanted to ask about Claudio, and whether she’d felt that way a year before when she was supposedly in love with him, but he didn’t and she appreciated it. She hadn’t, of course, and John was probably smart enough to guess it, but she didn’t need him making her say it specifically: that something he did corrupted her so much, so to speak.

It’s the kind of information that she thinks would make things between them awkward. They’d been that way for a while, but they weren’t really anymore, and she liked it. She liked feeling comfortable with him.

“What about you,” she’d asked then, breaking up the weird silence. “What’s your favorite Bard play?”

“Oh, definitely _Hamlet_.” He said it with the utmost certainty, like it’s something he’d thought about a lot before. This didn’t really surprise her. “Me and my mum saw this amazing production of it when I was seven, and I’ve loved it ever since.”

“You were seven?”

“She thought it would help stimulate me or something, I don’t really know. But it was fantastic, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it since.” There was something so incredibly genuine about the way he was speaking, and she’d never quite seen him like it. Hero thought it was charming. “ _Hamlet_ is my favorite all the way.”

John didn’t ever talk about his mother, at least not with Hero. She’d known bits and pieces of things (Pedro and John were half-brothers with the same dad, but Pedro was older; the women who acted like John’s mum wasn’t really John’s mum, because John’s real mum was dead), but never on a personal level, and never enough to ask. She hadn’t ever known how close they were, or what his life was like before she died. From the way he was talking, it sounded like he’d adored her.

She’d wanted to ask him about it, but it seemed too personal. It was on that list of things they weren’t supposed to talk about, like their meaningful looks and the fact they he once kind of fucked up her life. There were things they couldn’t bring up, because they required too much. This seemed like one of those things.

But he’d read her mind anyway. “I was seven when she died.”

“How?” Hero hadn’t even pretended that that wasn’t what she was thinking, that he wasn’t completely right.

“Car accident. She was in a coma for a few weeks, but it didn’t really ever seem like things were going to be okay,” he’d said, serious but in this was where he’d clearly said it a million times, where it still stung but not as much anymore. And it also wasn’t angry at all. She remembers that. “I went to live with my dad a few weeks after a funeral.”

“Did you know him at all?”

He’d shrugged. “Not really. He’d sometimes come up and give me presents, but that’s really about it. I knew him and Ann knew who I was, and she probably thought he should do more, but it was weird.”

“Because he cheated on her.”

“Yes, and because my mum chose to keep me, and then I went on existing. I was the living proof of what he had done to her.”

They’d let it sit in the air for a moment, what he had said lingering. She was interested in hearing him talk about it, because he wasn’t as emotional as she might have expected, after everything that had happened the past year. She’d wondered if that was on purpose.

“And you didn’t know Pedro?”

“No,” he’d said, not looking at her. “We didn’t know about each other at all.”

 

 

 

“Did you really love him?” This came later, when they’d been in the bathroom for a few hours and were technically drunk, and things had gotten personal enough that he felt he could ask it. She’d asked him about his dead mum, so he could ask this. “Last year before -- all of it. Did you really love him?”

The problem was of course that she hadn’t actually known how to answer, because it was such a big grand question – because the memory was tainted so much that she couldn’t look at it anymore and just see it innocently, without any prior knowledge. “I’ve no idea.”

“You thought you did.”

If Hero noticed any hint of bitterness in his voice, she chose to ignore it. “Yeah well, I thought a lot of things about that relationship that weren’t true,” she’d said, staring down at her empty beer bottle. “I think there were actually a lot of things wrong in it, to be honest.”

“What do you mean?”

And maybe there was a part of her that wanted to conceal all of it, but it didn’t really matter, because Hero had felt it all so much for so long. She wanted to get it out. It was two o’clock in the morning in the bathroom at a mostly done party, and she had to say it.

“We didn’t like each other for who we actually were -- we only liked the good parts. The fact that we could be nice and friendly, and that we could sometimes be funny and sometimes be pretty. That’s all there was. We didn’t have anything in common, not really. We just liked the good things in each other.” She’d ran a hand through her hair, trying to get her thoughts out. “And he idolized me. So fucking much, it was ridiculous. He pretended that I was the most perfect person he’d ever met, and that anything I ever did was blessed by the heavens.”

“Isn’t that how people act when they’re in love?”

“I don’t think so, because it wasn’t actually me. He was only looking at the good parts of me, and just ignoring everything else.”

And then she’d looked up at John, who was staring at her with sympathy and agreement but also curiosity, like he really wanted to know what she thought of it all. Like it meant something to him.

“I don’t want someone who only loves me for my good parts. I want someone who knows I can be mean sometimes, and who doesn’t love me in spite of it, but because of it.” She’d sighed, frustrated, because she just had to get it out. “I think I need someone who likes me for my bad parts, because just liking someone for their good parts isn’t good enough. It doesn’t count.”

And what happened next was probably pretty inevitable, in the grand scheme of things, but it felt bigger at the time. It felt like it all happened of its own accord – as though they hadn’t been moving towards it for some time, like it wasn’t what they had both been waiting for.

What happened is this:

Hero said: “I don’t think I loved him. I didn’t actually know him,” and then she looked at John, and he was looking at her in that way that he does – the way that they always stare at each other, like it means something even when they don’t understand and wish it doesn’t. Only in that moment they didn’t care. In that moment it felt right, appropriate that they felt that way, that they had their weird connection. He understood what she was saying, that the flaws matter and are important, and that she might have thought she loved Claudio, but she had also never had her heart broken. She didn’t really know what it meant to be in love then, and she didn’t even know what it was like to have a real relationship.

And then he was holding her hand. Soft, gentle, like he wanted to be careful about it, but enough that there wasn’t any question about what was happening.

They were holding hands, because she was holding his hand back. She let him hold her hand and then she did the same, and they were also both staring at each other. Holding hands and locking eyes.

They were buzzed. They were probably actually drunk, or whatever, but that didn’t change what was happening. It was a moment of pure connection, something that they’ve almost had before but haven’t ever fully indulged, because they didn’t actually like each other that much, and he fucked her over once. He didn’t mean to necessarily, but he did, and the simple idea that she could ever feel a connection with someone like that sickened her most of the time.

But they were drunk, and the night has been long, and they’d been crammed in that bathroom for long enough and they were probably a little horny as well. And pretending not to feel what she actually felt just seemed like too much effort at the time.

So they’d held hands.

 

 

 

_to be continued._


	2. say you'll remember me (red lips and rosy cheeks)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He drives her home in silence, and they say goodbye as quickly as possible, and then she goes to her room and tries to think of anything but what happened. She’s only a little successful."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay first off, oh my god you guys are all so incredibly nice! I’ve received a plethora of crazy nice comments and messages on the first chapter, and that freaking blows my mind like whoa! (I’ve also had so many people message me about wanting this part, and I now I’m terrified that it’s not as good as the first one – ugh, this is why multi-chapter fic is hard for me!) But yeah, you guys are all so crazy nice I don’t know what to do with myself! Seriously, you're the coolest!
> 
> Again, this whole thing was beta-read by [wibbelkind](http://wibbelkind.tumblr.com/). Comment and feedback would be much appreciated. Hope you all enjoy

They don’t talk about the hand holding, just like they don’t talk about their meaningful looks and the fact that he once kind of fucked up her life.

He drives her home in silence, and they say goodbye as quickly as possible, and then she goes to her room and tries to think of anything but what happened.

She’s only a little successful.

 

 

 

The Monday after the party, their entire year is talking about it, discussing the shenanigans and craziness and who went home with whom. Cora spends all of their math class talking about her and her guy – Peter is his name – and it’s endearing seeing her like someone so much, being a little less cynical and a little more in love. She then goes on about him all through lunch, and if she notices Hero and John giving her odd looks, she doesn’t say anything. Hero’s sure she doesn’t notice (being too caught up in being in love and all), but again, she doesn’t say anything. None of them do.

(It feels awkward and weird, because it’s such a completely sweet thing in and of itself. They didn’t kiss or grope or even have sex, which Hero honestly feels in this moment would have been less weird. They freaking held hands, like a couple of second graders, or people actually in love. It was an intimate moment – Hero not going to deny that, at least to herself – but it was also a very specific kind of intimate. It wasn’t dirty or hot or whatever. It was sweet, it was comforting; it was something she had done before with someone else, but it hadn’t felt the same then.

It was all those things, and it felt like so much. It really meant something, and that’s the problem.)

“I didn’t see you guys for most of it,” she suddenly says. “Did you end up finding each other and fighting for the whole night?”

They catch each other’s eyes, staring a look for just a second before both mumbling replies. Cora is far too infatuated to notice anything weird.

 

 

 

The problem, of course, is that they can’t just backtrack now and go back to not knowing each other at all.

She kind of wants that. She also wants to go forward kind of, because teenager and hormones or whatever, but even more so she wants to slowly back away and hide and return to the beginning of the year when he was just the guy who kind of screwed her over the year before.

Hero hadn’t really liked him. She hadn’t hated him, but she hadn’t exactly liked him either. The only reason they ever got close or whatever was because of their stupid project, which forced them into close quarters and conversations and a weird level of intimacy that she really wasn’t into dealing with.

The problem, of course, was that said project wasn’t over. Said project wasn’t even half over yet, because it was just so big and huge and time consuming. Said project meant that the Monday after they got a little drunk and held hands at a party, she was going to be spending three to four hours sitting on his floor reciting a Shakespeare play with him.

The fact that this is highly problematic for her goal to ignore any John-related feelings she might have does not escape her.

 

 

 

They spend seven hours huddled up in his room trying to memorize their lines. They don’t talk about the hand-holding incident, but they do fight a little bit about costume choices (John says they just wear all black, and Hero thinks that not fair because that’s all he ever wears anyways, and that they should at least try for like peasant blouses; he then asks her why she would ever think he would own something like that, and she yells at him to stop being an ass), and they only settle by deciding to order a pizza and talk about it later.

And they don’t fight about the pizza, which she would think was a good sign, but it’s only because they’ve done it so many times by now that they don’t even need to argue. They’ve already got it figured out.

She leaves his house late, and tired. They know the scene like the back of their hands, but it still doesn’t feel completely right, a few things she feels they need to fix before the performance on Friday.

She thinks it wasn’t that awkward. It wasn’t, really. They did their same old thing, pretended to be a couple breaking up and it still wasn’t weird. They didn’t talk about the incident, and it makes her happy, because it means she doesn’t have to think about it anymore than she would have anyways. She doesn’t have to see him in the hallway and think, _there’s John, who doesn’t talk to me anymore cause we once held hands and it was weird_. Things can go back to how they were.

And then it hits her like a ton of bricks:

It should be awkward. The fact that it isn’t that awkward is strange. They had a moment of kind-of intimacy, and it hasn’t actually effected them that much.

Not because it didn’t matter. Because it doesn’t actually feel that out of the ordinary. It almost feels like the norm by this point.

 

 

 

(Change never tells you when it’s coming. Change doesn’t check to make sure you’re cool with what’s happening, it just does.

Change sometimes lets you know about it after the fact, but by that point it doesn’t mean anything. By that point the damage has already been done.)

 

 

 

Their performance is… kind of sad, kind of fantastic, but mostly kind of sad. Like there have definitely been sadder high school performances of William Shakespeare, Hero can be sure, but this is still pretty bad. This goes into the pathetic and hilarious and just all around terrible category.

They end up going with the black, because for all of Hero’s protesting she can’t think of a way to fight “it’s simple and we already own it”, and if anyone asks this is where it all started to go wrong, them going with John’s stupid costume choice. Not the fact that the entire class talks through the first portion of their performance. Not the fact that they both end up tripping multiple times. Not the fact that she ends up hitting him across the head at one point, and that he legit during the scene has to take a second to deal with the pain, all while reciting lines about laying his head between her legs.

Not even the fact that in the middle of their scene, the light above them goes out. Like they’re just going about their lines and then the light flickers, and then it’s gone, and there’s obviously lots of other light in the room (plus the fact that it’s the middle of the day), but still, that light goes. She still tries to blame John for the costumes, though it doesn’t really work. Their light bulb quite literally goes out.

And then it's around this point that he starts to give her this big smile, because the reality of all the shit going wrong is apparently too much for him. Like it’s seriously pretty freaking comical. And here is the thing about John's smiles: Hero can say a lot of things about him, but one of them, no matter if she hates or adores him, is that he has a great smile. Like, it's so rich and complete, and maybe it's because she went an awfully long time without seeing it at all, but Hero finds it impossible to deny that his smile is quite simply fantastic - better than probably any and all other smiles she has ever been witness to.  
  
And they’re on stage (stage of course just being the front of their classroom), and it's gone pretty far south, and then he gives her this smile, his smile, and in like a second she's completely gone. He's telling her all these things in it - that they're going downhill, that things have gone so terribly wrong that he can't help laughing at it - Hero literally has no hope at all. She starts to smile herself, and then in a moment is laughing, and then he's laughing too. And then they're both onstage (in the front of their classmates, who are all of course laughing as well cause this is pretty pathetic), laughing but trying to contain themselves, giving the widest smiles they've probably ever had.  
  
But the thing is, they know the text. Things can go as terribly as they want, but Hero and John practiced the text so much that it's ingrained into their brains forever, and it's not like it's just going to go away. And the grade isn't about other things going wrong or right - it's about performing the scene, full text intact. So that's what they do.  
  
They stand in front of the class, laughing their asses off but trying desperately to stop (and failing spectacularly), reciting the break-up of Ophelia and Hamlet exactly as the Bard wrote it.  
  
"Get thee to a nunnery," he says, practically spitting.  
  
"Heavenly powers, restore him," she says, shaking her head laughing as if she can’t believe the reality of the situation, as if she really wants to stop but physically can’t.  
  
They rest of the class laugh as well (which is understandable, because she's sure this is completely hilarious), but not nearly as much as the two of them, who are both trying so so hard to stop but are only falling deeper down the rabbit hole. He'll start to sound coherent for a second, and then she'll giggle really loudly and he'll crack up again. She will get through a line unscathed, and then he'll give her this look (one part smile, one part sneaky manipulator, one part _we're fucked_ ), and she'll fall down all over again, breaking out right in the middle of a line.  
  
It's completely pathetic, really. Like it's legitimately sad that they've reached this point during the performance, their classmates giggling but also probably rolling their eyes, the teacher sighing as she writes on a little piece of paper that in all likelihood says they've failed.  
  
"The rest shall keep as they are," he says, and he's trying to stop himself, because they've finally made it to the end of the scene, and actually being series for a little bit might be helpful. Not that they really have any control. "To a nunnery -- go!"  
  
John sort of pauses for a second, then walks off stage/to the side of the classroom, waiting for Hero to do her reaction that they had planned out, mostly just an upset gasp. She stands there, just for a moment, laughing her ass up on the stage by herself, a hand covering her sad laughs.  
  
"We hope you enjoyed our performance..."

 

 

 

They manage to make it out with a B, which Hero completely attributes to them knowing the text so well, as opposed to any acting skills they might (and clearly do not) have. She finds this out as they’re studying in his room one day, tossing around topics for their diagram and watching the Kenneth Branagh version of _Hamlet_ (“There is no way it is going to take us less than four hours to decide what to do,” he’d argued. “And it’s sad and depressing that you haven’t seen it yet. Really, I’m doing you’re a favor”), him sitting in a chair watching the movie intensely, and her sprawled out on his bed, checking her e-mails because the movie has hit a lull.

When they find out, they celebrate accordingly, her sitting up in his bed so fast it makes him jump, and the two of them tossing the information back and forth like they can’t believe it at all, because they seriously cannot.

They’re hugging each other tightly a moment later, their sheer surprise at not completely failing a little too overpowering for their own good. She thinks it’s awkward, but only a little bit, not enough for it to matter and certainly not enough to make them stop. They’re flying high on success and relief and also the fact that they’ve just been laying around for the last few hours watching a movie, pretending to work on their project but actually not doing anything at all. This is honestly what she thinks winning the lottery must be like. Rushing into each other’s arms just seems natural.

And actually, it’s not really awkward at all. She just expected it to be.

 

 

 

“I vote Ophelia.”

“You always vote for Ophelia.”

“Because Ophelia is the best,” Hero says, taking a bite of her apple and offering him some chips. John takes one, albeit reluctantly. “And I actually do think she would make the most interesting subject piece.”

John sighs. “Hero, we cannot do our entire diagram on Ophelia. She’s one character.”

“You’re first suggestion was to do it on Hamlet. How is that any different?”

“The play is called _Hamlet_!” He exclaims, practically throwing his arms up. “I don’t think wanting to do a diagram on _Hamlet_ focusing on Hamlet is that far-fetched an idea.”

“So why would it be any different to do it on Ophelia?”

“Because she’s not Hamlet!”

Hero raises an eyebrow, eating one of her chips very purposely, making sure to put a focus on the noise it makes when she bites it. “Hamlet is kind of whiny. And stupid. He’s really stupid.”

John doesn’t even bother arguing with her on that front, and Hero appreciates it. “Yeah well, it’s his play. He can be as stupid and whiny as he wants.”

“I’m still not doing the diagram on him.”

“Well, I’m not doing it on Ophelia. We did the performance on her.”

“The performance was on her and Hamlet together.”

“But the play is technically all about Hamlet,” he continues, taking another one of her chips. “Ophelia doesn’t even have a scene on her own. We only know about her in relation to her relationships with other people.”

“So? Are you saying that makes her any less of a character?”

John shakes his head, rubbing his temples. “No. I’m just saying I don’t want to do the diagram on her.”

“Fine, well, I don’t want to do the diagram on Hamlet.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“What are you nerds talking about now?” Cora says, walking up to their lunch table and sitting down.

“ _Hamlet_ ,” they say in unison, each having a few chips and slugging back.

“That’s all you guys ever talk about,” she sighs, taking out her phone. Hero and John stare at each other, and John dips his head for a second, as if asking for a truce.

“We could just do it on the final scene.”

“And talk about… how everyone dies?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “It could work.”

She doesn’t love it, but she doesn’t exactly hate it either, and Cora is staring at them like they are a couple of idiots, and they also have been procrastinating actually starting this for a while now, and it’s at the point where decisions really should be made.

“Okay, but only if we get to have a little section on Ophelia. Her death is a big deal, after all.”

He sighs, but doesn’t protest. “Fine. Hero gets a picture and a blurb.” He takes another one of her chips, and Hero can’t help but smile a little at him.

“God, you two are a couple of nerds,” Cora mutters, scrolling through her phone. They ignore her.

 

 

 

It’s at this point that Hero starts to know things about John, the kind of things that you learn when you become reasonably close with someone.

These things are:

  * His favorite food is strawberries, which he likes with just about anything, but he also adores cold pizza that they ordered a while back and are too lazy to heat up (and he makes a thing of it, like it’s really sad that they both just don’t have the drive or energy to walk to the microwave and wait the two minutes for it to heat, but Hero suspects that he actually prefers it that way)
  * He has a fear of spiders, but it should really be called An Irrational Fear, because that’s what it is; he’s a fan of Harry Potter and he’s only seen _Chamber of Secrets_ once. That’s how far it goes.
  * Sylvia Plath and Shakespeare are his favorite writers, but he also really likes Dickens and the Brontë sisters. He absolutely detests Hemingway, and when Hero made him read Jane Austen, he found it impossible to protest her greatness.
  * He’s funny. Like really, genuinely funny. It’s usually black-humor, because that’s just how his mind works, but Hero finds him hilarious on occasion (and if she’s being completely honest, it’s gotten to the point where black-humor is what gets her). He’d never want to be a class-clown or anything, because he’d never want to be showy and would also probably be too insecure for it, but a part of her thinks he could. He has this way of making her laugh for days.
  * He feels a tremendous guilt about what happened the year before, but Hero thinks it’s mostly in relation to her. Him and Pedro still aren’t close. John doesn’t hate him anymore, and he no longer has any desire to ruin his life, but they definitely aren’t close-close. They talk on the phone sometimes, and she knows that John was the first person Pedro told when he figured out he was bi, but they also don’t have all that much in common, and they don’t really move on the same wavelength.
  * John goes to therapy sometimes. He did it more before, his parent’s gut-reaction to everything that happened last year, but he still usually goes like once every few weeks, and Hero thinks he doesn’t hate it. He doesn’t seem depressed anymore but Hero thinks that may just be because he doesn’t have to deal with all of it quite so much, now that Pedro doesn’t live at home.
  * (When he ran away, he ran to his mum’s brother, the uncle who he only sees every few years, who is the only connection he has to his life before now. John once told her after they had had too much wine that it was fine, but also just made him feel even lonelier. Because he wasn’t really connected to his uncle anymore, and he wasn’t connected to his family, and he didn’t really have too many friends, and it was just pretty awful. He also says that he thought about Hero a lot, and what he had done, and it was the first time that he really thought of her as a person who he had fucked over. He says that before be rationalized it by thinking that the only people who would believe Hero would cheat would have to be people who had been manipulated into thinking so; that’s what he told himself to make it okay, but when he’s with his uncle he realizes that that’s bullshit.)
  * He loves his stepmom. He knows that she is a nice person. And a part of him can’t ever forgive his dad for cheating on her. He knows that she loves him immensely, but that it’s tainted, because he is the living proof of one of the worst parts of her life.
  * He’s not as sad as everyone thinks. He’s not as cruel. He can be mean, but it’s usually with some kind of humor, and it’s never directed at the weak – he’s never mean towards people who he doesn’t perceive as already having everything. He’s funny. He’s whip smart, smarter than his grades probably show. Him and Cora became friends because they were both outcasts, but he really does love her in his own way. He cares about a lot of things.



Hero learns him. She begins to know him, in that way that you sometimes learn people really, really well, like the way that her and Bea can sometimes read which other’s minds, or how Ben has basically become her brother. There are people who you spend so much time with that you just know them, completely and utterly. She’s spent too much time collecting information not to know him like that.

And also it’s a two way thing. He knows her. She can tell because they have this wavelength thing, where whether or not they mean to they can always share a look and connect instantly. And it’s not like she’s hidden herself; Hero’s had too much wine before, Hero’s spilled info that takes a certain level of company. Hero’s told him things that she hasn’t told a ton of other people.

He knows her. They know each other. He probably has his own list of all the things he’s learned about her, and it’s probably long, and it probably has things she wouldn’t even think it would.

And it’s not intentional, it’s not like they planned it at all. She doesn’t suddenly feel like he’s her best friend, or that they have this special connection (which they maybe do have, but that’s not the point). They just know each other.

Really really really well.

 

 

 

There is a night where Cora wants them to hang out with her new boyfriend, but doesn’t want it to feel too weird or forced, so they all go see a movie and then drink at her house. It’s still a little awkward, because despite her protests Cora clearly wants them all to like each other, and it’s not hard to tell, and she ends up getting really drunk later on and then to no one’s surprise they end up disappearing for a while and leaving Hero and John alone in the living room, talking over Donnie Darko as they drink more.

Hero’s not sure how, but they get on the subject of firsts, which they promptly agree is completely pointless, because she already made a video recounting all her firsts (which they watch and that’s what is fucking awkward, watching her talk about Claudio and him being her first love or whatever; she spends most of it cringing), so it just turns to her asking him firsts, at rapid speeds because again: drunk.

“First pet?”

“A dog named Pudge when I lived with my mum.”

“First word?”

“I don’t know -- _mum_ , I think,” he says, scratching his nose, taking a sip of his beer.

“First bestfriend?”

He thinks for a second. “This kid named Patrick, back when I was a kid.”

It’s mostly just been boring stuff thus far, the kind of weird information that no one actually needs to know (and the only stuff that honestly she doesn’t already know). He seems amused by it all, a little more sober than she is, though not by much. It’s basically a game for Hero at this point, learning as many random facts about him as humanly possible.

And maybe if she was a little soberer, she wouldn’t ask the next question, because it’s dangerous and takes them into murky waters. They don’t talk about things like this, because they always seem to be territory that they don’t want to deal with, that they’re not sure if they can handle. It’s definitely on that list of things they don’t talk about.

“First kiss?”

He pauses for a moment. She’s taken things to places that they don’t take things, but also they’re having fun, and Hero thinks he won’t want to ruin that. And it’s weird that this is weird for them. It shouldn’t be, she thinks.

“Julie Romstom, when we were in Year 9.”

She falls a little flat at that, but ignores it. Twists her face into something that looks sour and takes another big sip. She’s known Julie Romstom for years, and Hero honestly wouldn’t have picked her as John’s type. Julie Romstom is really pretty, not that that matters of course. It’s just a fact. “What happened?”

“A game of Truth or Dare at one of Pedro’s parties.”

This makes Hero feel something that seems an awful lot like relief, but not completely. “Oh. Did you like her?”

“Not really, but I went out with her friend Nancy the next year.” He says it all very calmly, and it makes Hero feel off. That she knows him so well but didn’t know any of this. “She was my first girlfriend, by the way. If you were planning on asking that.”

She wasn’t, but now it’s all she can think about. And she knows it isn’t fair, because he already knows all these things about her, but it’s how she feels.

She doesn’t even think about what comes out next. It just happens.

“Your first impression of me?”

“I…” he hovers, because this is almost stepping into the territory that they really don’t talk about – there are places they don’t go and then there are _places they don’t go_ , and this is one of them. This is right at the edge of places they do not ever under any circumstances go. And he’s a little more sober, but not by much, and this is one of those things that can be officially pronounced as dangerous.

“Not much, I guess,” he says, and she can tell that he is going to take the easy route, the one where things don’t get blurry. It’s not completely honest, and a part of her doesn’t like it. “I thought you seemed nice and friendly, I think. Got good marks and all.” He pauses, and he’s looking at her weirdly, and in her head it feels like it’s leading up to something, but it probably isn’t. “And I thought you were pretty.”

The room feels very still. They’re sitting on Cora’s couch, watching _Donnie Darko_ , and the room feels very, very still. The air has gone.

“What about me?” he mutters. “What did you think of me.”

Again, she doesn’t even think about it. It seems too late to be thinking about these things.

“I thought you seemed lonely and sad. But not bad.”

 

 

 

She figures it would be best to call them friends these days, though that doesn’t feel completely right. They talk in the hallways, always eat lunch together, and hang out almost every day (and like, she can admit that it isn’t just for the project now, that going to his house or having him come to hers just feels natural; they’ll usually touch on it a little bit, discuss a few things, maybe even watch a Shakespeare movie (because he decided she had to watch every version of _Hamlet_ , and then she decided as payment he had to watch every _Midsummer's Night's Dream_ adaptation, and then watching Bard films was suddenly a thing they did), but it’s hardly the focus, and it’s definitely not the only reason they’re there at all). On paper, he sounds just like a friend. On paper, she basically has the same relationship with him than she does with Cora.

But it feels different. It feels like a whole other entity. When she feels about her and John, and then compares it to her and Cora, it feels like they couldn’t have less in common.

She sees just as much of John as she does Cora – actually more, since Cora and her Peter are officially a thing now and Cora spends a good chunk of her time with him. They do a lot of the same things; hang out, watch movies, order food. When she thinks about it logically, it seems the same, but she knows it isn’t. And not because they hate each other or he accidentally fucked her over once or whatever. It just is.

(And a part of her thinks to compare it to her and Claudio, but that’s not right either, because her and Claudio didn’t ever really know each other as well as they thought they did. They knew the superficial things, but not really too many of the ins and outs, and she knows _so_ _many_ of John’s. They’re not comparable, but there’s definitely a piece of that.)

The thing though, is that it doesn’t feel any less close with John than it does with Cora; that’s not what she’s getting at. Just a different kind of closeness, something that can’t be compared to her and Cora or her and Ben or Bea or whoever. It’s not that she’s any less close with them or him or what have you. It’s just a different kind of close.

So yeah, Hero guesses calling them friends kind of fits. It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t explain some things (like that one time they totally held hands for an extended period of time), but generally it fits. John is her friend, Hero supposes.

 

 

 

And then, of course, it’s around this time that they kiss. Hero and John kiss. Hero doesn’t kiss John, and John doesn’t kiss Hero – they kiss each other. Very mutual, very unexpected, very two-sided.

That happens.

 

 

 

It’s not even like there’s some big magical moment leading up to it, or that they’re drunk or whatever. After it happens, she’s surprised that it hadn’t before when they were drunk. Once it actually occurs, it’s like something about their relationship clicks for her, like the missing piece comes into play and she finally sees what they are, what their relationship actually is. And it’s with this knowledge that she’s surprised it hadn’t happened when they were drunk.

But the kiss itself, the one that actually happened as opposed to just happening in her mind –

They’re both huddled on his floor, cutting out things for their diagram-on-death, and they’re not talking much, in part because last night was the night of weird drunk questions, but more because they’re tired and have reached the point in their friendship where not talking is no longer awkward, where they feel comfortable enough to just sit and be silent and work, and that’s enough.

They’ve also reached the point where they can have weird almost-romantic moments and not have it feel awkward afterwards. She doesn’t know what this says about them – that they’ve had so many moments like that that they’ve worked out a system of handling them. She thinks this is maybe why it happens now, because they’ve used up all their get out of jail free cards, and they can’t have another moment like that go by and not have it mean anything at all.

But anyways –

They’re cutting and they’re silent, the 1967 _Taming of the Shrew_ on in the background, and they kiss. John says something funny, and Hero looks up to laugh, and then they lock eyes for a second and then they kiss. Like it’s this routine thing that they do all the time, like they’re some married couple who just sometimes kiss without any pretense, cause they’re just so gosh darn in love. As though they’re running on some clock and it’s finally reached the _time to makeout now_ point.

But the actual kiss-kiss part of the kissing –

They go in at the exact same time, or at least it’s exact enough that when Hero remembers it, it feels like it. Maybe one of them went first and the other followed, but they were both thinking the same thing, and it was going to happen no matter who went in first. So they go in at the same time, and then their lips meet, and it’s like good. Right, is how it feels. His mouth is hot on hers, and she opens her mouth first before he really has time to ask, and it’s the sloppiest kiss she’s ever had, but in the moment it seems like the only way it could possibly be.

It’s good. On her ranking of kisses she’s had, it definitely belongs at the very top (and Hero doesn’t think about this at the time, because she’s a little preoccupied, but it’s the complete opposite from her kisses with Claudio, who was always so sweet and gentle and kind, but also was just a little bit afraid to actually kiss her – like kiss her, kiss her, as opposed to a nice long closed mouth kiss, which they did a lot of.

John isn’t afraid. He doesn’t overstep his boundaries or move too fast, but he takes her signals and rolls with them. Hero isn’t afraid either, and maybe she was back then, but whatever. The point is that neither of them are afraid).

They kiss eagerly, like it’s something they’ve been waiting for, like they’ve been looking forward to it for some time. Which – maybe they have, she doesn’t know. This isn’t exactly some forbidden love waiting story or whatever, but they’re teenagers and they kind of like each other and they’re attracted to each other, and if she’s being completely honest it’s not like the idea never occurred to her. She’d thought about it before, mostly in passing but sometimes with a level of seriousness that she wasn’t quite sure how to handle, because yes her and John were friends, and she was pretty attracted to him and all that jazz, but he was also the guy who last year convinced the entire school that she cheated on her boyfriend, and you can’t just ignore that –

Or so she thought.

It turns out, ignoring isn’t quite so hard when you’re a horny teenager. It turns out that ignoring can be fairly easy when you’re making out on his bedroom floor and he’s cupping you face and you’re wrapping a leg around him and –

They kiss with the 1967 _Taming of the Shrew_ on in the background. They kiss for a bit and then they makeout on his floor for a while, and then they hear the sound of Ann telling them that she’s home from the market, and then they break away and decide that they’ll work on the project more tomorrow. And then Hero drives home, and spends an inordinate amount of time sitting in the car just trying to catch her breath, and goes and Skypes with Bea and only mentions John once, casually informing her that they have a project together. Bea apologizes.

That happens.

 

 

 

She lays in her bed all night, thinking it over, weighing the situation and her feelings and whatever else there could possibly be. She thinks that John should really be off limits, that on the list of guys she could possibly be into John shouldn’t even be allowed, because it would be weird and destructive and also just plain unhealthy to even consider it.

Being friends with the guy who fucked you over is one thing, but dating him? Or at the very least making out with him seems like it shouldn’t be okay, right? Like that is probably something that will be frowned on.

But then she thinks about him, and the kiss, and days spent goofing off and watching movies and trying to understand Shakespeare. She likes him. _Fuck_. She likes him. She like likes him, and is pretty sure he like likes her, and ignoring has been swell and all but it’s also kind of frustrating.

Hero lays in her bed, and she thinks so many things, and they’re all about him and his mouth on her mouth and his words and the way he has this smile that he only ever seems to let her see and –

Fuck the rules. Fuck who she is and isn’t supposed to date. Everyone thought she should date Claudio, and he turned out to be kind of a douchbag. At least with John she already knows all his flaws.

At least with John she knows he likes her for her good and bad parts.

 

 

 

The next day in school is awkward, but only because they let it be. They stare at each other during class, and then all through lunch, and then for their next class. They stare and they think things and they don’t talk much, and then they go back to his house under the pretense of working on their project, and last two minutes before they’re making out again.

And just like that, it becomes a thing they’re doing.

 

 

 

It surprises her how little things change – how this big thing has happened in their relationship, and everything is basically the same. They still hang out for hours every day and argue about pizza and creative decisions, only now they also kiss a lot. It probably shouldn’t come as quite so much of a shock to her, that they’ve basically been in love or whatever for a while now, but it does.

They don’t tell anyone, of course, because judgmental eyebrows and comments on how they’re really fucking stupid do not seem all that appealing. They don’t even tell Cora, whose probably been expecting it for a while now, mostly because they don’t know what it is but also because complete secrecy seems right at the moment. It’s there thing, and it doesn’t get to belong to anyone else yet. It’s not like things are that different, anyways; everyone else will just think so. Why cause an uproar?

 

 

 

“I think it needs more lace.”

“That’s what you said before.” He sighs. They’re staring at their diagram at eleven-thirty the night before it is due.

“Well, I still think it needs more lace.”

“I think that’s plenty.”

“If you had things your way there wouldn’t be any lace at all.”

“That’s not entirely true,” he protests, though his voice isn’t exactly convincing. “I think some lace is good. It works with the dead flowers.”

“I thought they seemed thematic,” she mumbles. “You know, dead flowers for a piece on death.”

“They’re good.”

It’s late and they’re tired, and they have to be up by six-thirty in a few hours, so their conversation is hardly up to standard. But Hero isn’t sure about the diagram – it looks good and what-not, but she’s not sure if it’s as good as it possibly could be. And after their sad performance, she feels they need an almost-perfect grade if they want to get out with an A. Which she plans to.

“I just feel like there is something we’re missing.” She needs to be going home, and they both know this. She’d texted Mum that she was on her way a couple hours ago, so that Mum would just go to sleep and not wait up (this is a plan Hero knows will work because she’s done it on multiple occasions), but she really does need to be leaving. His parents think he’s asleep in his room alone; getting the proper amount of a sleep before a hard day’s work is always necessary; etc.

“Hero,” he says, turning her to face him, “I mean this in the nicest way possible, but: please get out.”

The little shit, pulling the _you’re keeping me awake_ card. Really, he should know better.

“Don’t you want a good grade?”

“I want to fucking go to bed,” he mumbles. “So, unless you plan on sleeping here…”

Hero starts to grumble, turning to get her book bag. It’s actually not that unappealing an idea, and it’s not like she hasn’t slept there before…  but she’s also sure parents would start noticing if she just didn’t come home. And they definitely don’t need the whole school seeing them arrive at the exact same time.

“If we get a sub-par grade on this, I’m blaming you.”

“Noted,” he says, handing Hero her car eyes and giving her a quick kiss.

This is a thing they do sometimes. They kiss when they part, as if they are in some long-term relationship with goals and plans and all that jazz, as opposed to two teenagers who don’t really know how to handle their feelings. It’s kind of comforting, in a way, and even without that: it feels right.

(They don’t really talk about the feelings part of them. Like, they’re definitely there and they definitely both know it, but it seems dangerous and weird and _scary_ to mention them. It means that there’s more going on then they feel entirely comfortable with. Because once they bring it up, they have to bring up the other thing: _I like you and I don’t think I’ve ever liked someone quite as much_.

Hero’s not sure if she’s ready to feel all that about John Donaldson. At the very least, she’s hardly ready to admit to it.)

But then of course, just as Hero is about to leave, it hits her.

She turns around and eyes him. “Okay, I need you to hear me out: sparkles.”

 

 

 

They go on without actually acknowledging things for some time. It works for them. They’re pretty much best friends by this point, and like it’s gotten to where neither one of them really have the energy to deny _that_. On a recent Skype conversation, Hero casually mentioned that her and John had sort of become friends, and Bea was skeptical and judgy but she also wasn’t completely angry, so there’s that. They’d made some amount of progress, she thought; things weren’t like they used to be.

They just didn’t talk about the rest of it. How they make out all the time but also held hands sometimes, and also had really gotten into goodbye kisses when no one was around. That was the kind of stuff they didn’t mention – not to themselves, not to anybody. That felt like them breaking the rules.

But yeah, they go on like that for a while, doing what they’re doing and not talking about it and feeling things and pretending they don’t.

And then, sometime in the middle of June, Pedro comes to visit. And that just ruins all of that.

 

 

 

There is still a list of things they don’t talk about, though it been tilted and warped and doesn’t look quite the same anymore: the fact that they like-like each other; how Cora probably knows they’re doing something; the simple fact that they really don’t want any of their old friends to figure it out just yet; Hero not really having a relationship with her brother anymore; that one time he accidentally ruined her life.

These are the things they try to stray away from at all costs. Pedro is at the very top.

And it’s not like John still hates him, because he really doesn’t and he’s worked hard to make the relationship better. But it’s not really great; they love each other in that way that blood relatives normally do; they talk on the phone sometimes and, and they’re also definitely trying, but that’s really it, because it’s got to be hard to be honest with your brother about how he, without even trying to, fucked you up a little bit. About how he didn’t know it but he was treating you like crap for years. About how you have all this anger sometimes and you don’t know what to do with it.

And Hero knows John also doesn’t want to blame Pedro for what happened, because he doesn’t like pretending that he wasn’t a complete dick, and that it wasn’t pretty much all his fault. But then how do you talk about it? How do you say, _I don’t blame you, but also you did kind of screw me up_?

So Pedro and John don’t really talk about that stuff. And then Hero and John don’t talk about it either. Hero isn’t exactly Pedro’s biggest fan anyways; she wouldn’t really be able to wholeheartedly preach to him about forgiveness.

(Because, if Hero is honest with herself, she still isn’t sure if she knows the first thing about forgiveness; she gets it on paper, gets that it’s good and leads to positive things, and she doesn’t regret forgiving everyone after what happened. But she’s also not as good as letting go of her anger as she would like. It’s easy to say you forgive someone, but still feel anger towards them.

Then again, she doesn’t feel as angry with John, who made it all happen in the first place. So maybe she’s just subjective with forgiveness.

But she thinks that should be allowed. She should get to be subjective with who she personally forgives. She gets that right.)

He mentions at as casually as he can to her a few weeks before, slipping it out while they’re watching a movie, and it’s instantly established that she just won’t be coming over then at all.

(“So Pedro’s coming home next month,” he’d said, taking a sip of his Coke. “He’s staying for about a week.”

A beat passed. Onscreen, Inigo Montoya was telling Count Tyrone Rugen that he should prepare to die.

“I’ve actually been feeling pretty under the weather lately. I’m not how I’ll be feeling by then.” She hadn’t looked over at him, just watched as Inigo killed the Count. “I probably won’t be over that week.”

He sighed. “Sounds about right.)

But the thing is, they don’t actually know when-when he’s coming. Like, they obviously have a date, but Pedro being Pedro he doesn’t give a time, just says “I’ll be in on Saturday,” and leaves it at that. And they haven’t spent an extended period of time away from each other in a long time by this point, and the entire thing just seems a little weird. His mother will probably ask where Hero is, they’ll end up texting the entire time. It’s going to be really out-there.

So she comes over on Saturday, early in the morning, books in hand ready to work (which doesn’t even make much sense, because the next bit is an essay due in like a month, but it seems dangerous to go over without an alibi). The plan is that she stays until around one, one-thirty. Pedro is making the drive up from school, which’ll take at least three hours, and he probably won’t leave until at least eleven, so by the time he gets there she’ll have been gone for some time. They feel like they’re pretty safe.

(And like, obviously it’s a risk, they know. They make it sound foolproof in their heads, but logically it’s got issues, issues that they choose to ignore. Neither one of them comment on how this probably says something about their attachment to each other).

And it works for the most part. They do their normal thing, putting on a movie and pretending to study, and they hold off on the makeouts for obvious reasons. It seems fine. It seems like a good plan.

They miscalculate.

“God this is weird.”

“I don’t think changing the setting of _As You Like It_ to Japan is that weird…”

“None of the primary characters are Japanese,” Hero says, scribbling down essay topics. “That’s kind of offensive, I think.”

John pauses for a second, taking a bite of pizza. “Okay, yeah. That’s weird.”

“Thank you.”

He looks over her shoulder, moving aside a piece of her hair. “So, what do you have?”

“Mostly topics about how Hamlet is whiny, and doesn’t know how to handle himself,” she says, highlighting the list between her doodles. “And Ophelia.”

“So nothing I couldn’t have guessed on my own?”

Hero shrugs. “It’s not like I’ve ever been known for my unpredictability.”

“Clearly.”

She smiles, hitting him across the shoulder. “You asshole…”

And then, as if on cue, the door flies open, Pedro bursting in like he’s some sort of grand surprise.

(It’s a surprise alright. She’d hardly call it grand, though).

“Hey -- yyyyy….” Pedro says, his giant surprise-smile fading away the second he spots her, this weird sort of deflation from overexcitement to something more like utter shock. Pedro looks at John. Hero looks at Pedro. John looks at Pedro. Pedro looks at Hero. John and Hero under no circumstances look at each other.

John speaks first. “Hi.”

“Heyyyyy, John,” Pedro says, slowly. “Hi Hero.”

“We’re partners on an assignment,” John blurts out.

“We were just working on it right now,” Hero says.

“And watching a movie – to help us learn about Shakespeare.”

“And I was just leaving,” Hero spats out, quickly standing up and getting her book bag.

Pedro stares at the two of them as Hero gets ready to leave, her and John avoiding eye contact like it’s the plague.

“So I’ll see you in class Monday?” Hero asks, making some weird thing out of them parting like partners or whatever.

“You’ll see me in class.” He doesn’t look her in the eye.

“Great,” she says, turning around towards the door and more or less dashing by Pedro. “Bye guys.”

She makes it out as the house just as Pedro is shouting, “Nice seeing you,” from John’s room. It doesn’t make her feel any better.

 

 

 

John doesn’t text her all weekend, which isn’t actually that surprising given everything. She can only imagine what it must be like, Pedro accusingly asking questions and John just awkwardly avoiding. It’s gotta be weird enough for them without all this, anyways. So she doesn’t text him either.

On Monday morning, as soon as Hero arrives at school, John pulls her into a closet.

“So I’m pretty sure he knows.”

He says it like it’s something they’ve been discussing all weekend, but this doesn’t really surprise her. She’s right there with him.

“How much, exactly?”

“I don’t know, but something,” he rubs his temples, flustered. “Like, he asked about you a lot right after you left, and he keeps on asking me about the project -- like how much time we’ve been spending together, and how long we’ve had it for and shit like that.”

“And you’ve told him nothing, I assume…”

“Well, I’ve tried.” Hero raises an eyebrow, and he shrugs a little. “I can’t not saying anything at all – that’ll seem weird. I have to answer his questions.”

Hero let’s out an annoyed breath, slumping on the wall. She hates this, like really, really does. Of all the people to discover that her and John might-be-kind-of-in-a-relationship, Pedro is at the bottom of the list, right next to Claudio. They don’t need that.

(And it’s not because they’re afraid, or because she actually cares what they think of it. It’s that they’re going to make it about them. They’re gonna see it as her picking sides or John trying to hurt them or _whatever_. They’re not going to see it as just John and Hero liking each other – they’re going to turn it into something else completely, and make it into a thing.

Hero and John don’t even know what it is they’re doing just yet. They don’t need Pedro and Claudio bursting in and making them declare alliances and feelings and shit.)

“He’ll tell Claudio immediately, you know,” she says, frowning.

“He might not.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

John pauses for a moment. “Pity.”

Hero sighs, upset, and John looks at her with the same face.

“Does Pedro actually know anything official?” she asks.

“No. Just that we have a big project, and that we see some of each other,” he says. “More than we used to, anyway.”

“Right.”

They stare at each other, doing the meaningful looks that they apparently do so well, and she knows they’re on the same wavelength – the one that knows it’s fucked and also doesn’t want to deal with this. She doesn’t rationally care of Claudio knows she kinda-maybe-is-with-John-a-little-bit, but she also really would prefer he doesn’t for a while. She doesn’t feel confident enough with as a couple quite yet to deal with his criticism.

Because the thing is (and this is her admitting this to herself for the first time; this is Hero realizing what she’s known for a while and has just been ignoring), Hero maybe really likes John. Like a lot, a lot. More than she has ever liked anyone romantically. More than she has ever liked a lot of people, period.

She likes being with him, despite herself. She likes spending time in his room and on his bed and stretched out on his floor, and she likes him to be in her space, too. Hero never feels like she’s had enough of him; it’s never like, “we’ve been together all day, let’s spend some time apart now”. That feeling never comes. She trusts him, maybe more than she should, but she does. Everything he does is amusing and amazing and even just interesting to her; even when he’s doing something dumb, it still has her complete attention. And she’s also pretty certain he feels the same.

And the thing is that, Hero sees why she maybe shouldn’t feel that way. She logically can see that he truly ruined her life for a little – that what he did was terrible, and that a part of her is still maybe a little angry about it, but with John she doesn’t really care. She hears him talk about Pedro and Claudio and his life, and even though she knows it’s a two-way street (like yeah, his life was crappy and he was depressed and no one noticed, but also: that does not excuse fucking up the life of someone who he didn’t even know that well, who he didn’t even give a shit about), but she can’t help but side with him a little bit. She can’t help see his perspective and take it seriously, and forgive Pedro and Claudio a little less. She still forgives them, of course, but it’s different: with them, she’s chosen to forgive – she’s made a decision to try to move on, and is sticking with it. With John there isn’t a choice – she just does.

When she called Claudio her first love, it was because she had never been in a relationship with anyone before, and he was sweet and made her happy and that seemed like it probably was what love was meant to be like. It’s not as though she had a sign, or that she felt any deep and powerful connection. She just didn’t have anything to compare it to, and didn’t have anything telling her that it wasn’t love.

With John, Hero has about a million reasons why she shouldn’t feel that way. She logically should be angrier – she should hate him a little bit, even. But he’s where she always wants to be; he’s who she feels a connection with, a kind of connection that Hero has truly never felt with anyone else, and that in her gut she knows is probably something like love.

So yeah. Hero probably likes John a lot. She isn’t sure and she isn’t positive, but it feels about right. Right now, she really doesn’t need her whole group of friends knowing – she really doesn’t need everyone questioning what the hell has been going on since they graduated.

“I don’t think anyone needs to know yet.”

She says it suddenly, briskly, because it means something and they don’t need to deal with that. ( _Yet_ means not forever. _Yet_ means that down the line people probably will know. _Yet_ implies that there’s something to know.)

He smiles at her, his great-amazing-John-smile that she’s liked forever, before she liked him at all. He conceals it a little, because this is technically a moment of panic, but it’s there all the same.

“Me neither. Not yet.”

He takes her hand.

Hero feels like this means something; she feels like she wants it to.

 

 

 

Pedro stays for the full week, showing up at school (because as former Student Leader he can do that?) and just kind of hanging around. Hero and John avoid each other at all costs, talking about the project whenever they’re together in Pedro’s vicinity. They don’t text, they don’t wink or smile, and Pedro seems to buy it, or at least he pretends to.

On Saturday when he leaves, John immediately texts her _all round great guy has left the building_ , and she’s driving over in minutes. They’re reunion feels like something out of a long-lost-love-story.

They don’t bring up the project at all, don’t even pretend for a second that that could possibly be why she is over. This is a first that neither of them take note of.

 

 

 

(Change doesn’t announce itself. It just happens.

You can look at a situation at one point, and then flash forward and look at it again, and you can see how things were different, even if _at the time it seemed like nothing at all_.)

 

 

 

After all this, secrecy is hardly their strong suit.

They still put in some effort, of course. They don’t kiss in the hallways or hold hands or anything like that. If a person saw them together who didn’t know them, they wouldn’t immediately assume that they were a couple. They’re still careful with the old gang – Hero’s very good about watching what she says, especially since Pedro is suspicious now. They’re not exactly a couple-couple in the normal sense.

But still… it probably isn’t that hard to see. They make no secret of their friendship, which at this point is close enough that people probably suspect things anyways. They smile and laugh at moments when they probably shouldn’t, occasionally beam at each other with an amount of warmth that is usually only reserved for people you’re infatuated with.

And in the back of their heads, they know it isn’t smart. That they would hate for the old gang to find out, but then they’re completely obvious to anyone who is watching. It’s not exactly the most brilliant they’ve ever been.

“So, have you guys declared your love and skipped off into the sunset yet,” Cora asks her one day at lunch when it’s just the two of them, John off getting help with math. “Or are you still in the beginning stage?”

Hero’s eyes go wide. She almost drops the apple in her hand.

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

Cora raises an eyebrow. “Hero, you may be an okay liar, but I’m better.” She smiles a little bit, this sort of satisfied-loving smile kind of thing. “Now, how long have you and John been going on?”

“You make it sound like we’re actually a couple,” Hero grumbles, defeated, pushing aside her books.

“We’ll aren’t you?”

Hero sighs. “We’re… I don’t know, doing something I guess. I wouldn’t exactly call it official.”

“So you don’t want to get married and have his babies?”

“Oh, shut up.”

Cora just sits back, a satisfied smile on her face, the glory of being right. It makes Hero feel a little sick.

“Okay fine,” Cora starts, “so just answer me this: how would you feel if he suddenly got with someone else, then?”

She looks at Hero very purposely, an eyebrow quirked, and Hero knows she’s being tested – that Cora is baiting her with a question that both already know the answer to, even if she’s never considered it before. Hero has never been a jealous person; it’s one emotion that she can say she confidence that she really never feels, and she’s never had much sympathy for it anyways (Claudio obviously didn’t help with that). If you’re in a relationship with someone and you trust them, there should be no need to feel jealous. If you do, it says more yourself than anyone else.

But her and John aren’t in a relationship, technically speaking. And even if they were, Cora is talking completely in hypotheticals, which makes it easier to fall into. In her head, Hero can see it all – and she suddenly feels a weird pang of anger for the nonexistent girl John would be kissing instead of her.

“We’re not public,” she says, as if making an official statement. “But we are… we’re not dating other people.”

(In the back of her head, it occurs to her that they haven’t actually discussed exclusivity at all, and that for all she knows they would be dating others. But they’re not. Hero just knows this. She doesn’t need to ask John because she already knows that he’ll say the same thing.)

Cora gives her this joyous, successful smile, and Hero can tell this is exactly the kind of confirmation she was going for.

“Thanks for the clarification.”

 

 

 

In the middle of July, Will Carlson throws another one of his giant rager parties, because apparently three months is a long enough time to keep the people waiting, and John and Hero decide to go, as maybe a joke and maybe something genuine and also just as something to do on a Friday night. Cora will be there as well, of course, but she’ll probably just spend the entire night with her Peter, so they don’t expect much on that front anyway. They just – it seems like a thing to do. To go to a party and have a little too much to drink and make out on the bathroom floor. It doesn’t sound too unappealing to either of them.

(And of course, they take forever to decide if they actually want to go, going back and forth between what they call their pride and their actual desire. In Hero’s mind, she knows that logically she doesn’t really like parties like this, except with John, and then she usually really likes them. So they pretend that it’s something they have to do – out of boredom or obligation or whatever, and they act like that right up until the event; but the point is that whether or not they actually admit it, they’re still sitting on his front porch at midnight that Friday, so all their arguments are kind of stupid anyways.)

She’s wearing this cotton white dress and a leather jacket, sort of a sweet-but-badass look going for her, and he’s wearing one of his black sweaters and a pair of Chucks, and they’re sitting on Will’s porch, sipping a couple beers and watching everyone dance. (Will has got this giant house, and like two separate dance floors – one inside and out – and one of the signatures of his parties apparently is that all the doors are left open, and people move between.)

She thinks they probably look like a couple.

They are a couple, she supposes. It feels like they’re a couple – in terms of someone being your person and your partner and shit, and she only has Claudio to compare it to but this seems right. With Claudio it was always so official – she can specifically remember when they went from being friends to being in a relationship, as though he gave her his pin or something, and she knows exactly when they ended; with John it’s blurry, but she can see they’ve made it to a certain destination point. Hero can remember a period when she wasn’t infatuated with him, but she can’t remember the feeling of it. And she can’t pinpoint when he went from being nothing to everything.

She thinks you usually don’t notice change when it’s happening – or at least when it’s real. If something is so completely intense, you don’t get to just pick one moment and say, _that is where it all began_. You can pick a period and maybe something like, _this move caused this which caused this which caused this_ , but there isn’t a set date or period or whatever. Things just happen, and then afterwards you realize that they have.

Still:

“Oh my god, Hero!” Bianca Rice says, coming up to Hero as she’s grabbing another beer. Hero and Bianca have known each other since they were kids, and they’ve never been friends but also never disliked each other. Bianca always seemed like a sweetheart, and right now she also seems pretty drunk. “You look _soooo_ adorable! I’m so glad you came!”

“Thanks,” Hero says, smiling, because her and Bianca normally only speak when they’re paired together for projects, and she’s very sweet but also it’s a little abnormal for Hero. She likes it, though.

“Are you here with your boyfriend, what’s his name? -- Pedro’s younger brother--”

“Yes.”

It falls out before she has time to think, before she has time to rationalize what it is she is actually saying, which is ridiculous because she isn’t even the drunk one there, but still. It’s a reflex at this point; she’s never officially called him her boyfriend or whatever, maybe because that almost feels cheap (like, boyfriend seems like such a pointless term, and Hero is well aware that that is exactly what Bea used to say before she got with Ben, but she kind of gets it; Claudio was her boyfriend, and that didn’t actually hold too much weight emotionally), but it also feels right and appropriate, and really, Hero thinks she’s too young to be pretending that calling the guy she’s infatuated with her boyfriend is uncool.

She says yes. Someone asks her if John is her boyfriend, and Hero’s immediate reaction is yes.

She thinks that probably means something big.

 

 

 

Hero doesn’t watch the old videos anymore, because the period of her life is over, and it’s weird seeing things as they used to be, weird seeing memories that at the time felt so perfect and pure, and have now been kind of tainted. She wants to be objective – wants to look at a video and think, _we were so happy then, it was all so great, this is lovely_ , but she can’t really, not yet. There are too many parts of the videos that ring false for her now – too many things that she knows aren’t true. Claudio is nothing but a sweet, charming guy. Pedro is an all around great guy. Beatrice and Benedick hate each other. Hero can’t really look at stuff like that and not think about the realities.

And then of course there’s John, who always looks so unhappy and depressed, who she remembers everyone just thinking he was a weirdo to be ignored. The way that Pedro talks about him, how everyone treats him so terribly – she can’t look at that and not get angry, even if the John in the videos is the same John who unknowingly is plotting to ruin her life for a bit. She honestly has more sympathy in real time, where she can look at it all with a clear head. The videos just make her fume.

So she doesn’t want much, but not never. She’ll occasionally watch some of her and Bea, and can enjoy them, even if they’re not really who they are now (Bea was a lot more snarky – and some of that snark has more or less been given to Hero). But she likes to watch the ones of Bea and Ben, since they usually don’t concern her or John or whoever, and they’re adorable and also she misses them and it helps.

Her favorite is the one of them in the bathtub, because it is so utterly dorky and cute and just… every single thing they both hated for so long. She used to watch it and roll her eyes, the sheer magnitude of their affection amusing to her. Now she understands it.

(Her and John kiss a lot. They hang around and joke and kiss and sometimes do a little bit more, and it feels like she’s got some sort of euphoria surrounding her – that she can’t be touched or whatever. They’re still rational beings, obviously, but they also sometimes do things without thinking, and then afterwards they don’t care. It’s pathetic how much they like each other, she thinks. They probably look just like some teen romantic comedy.

It’s maybe just lust, or passion or whatever. She wants every part of him, all the time. She thinks this is probably wrong for some reason – feeling so dependent and all – but she just doesn’t care.

She likes him far too much for her own good, but he seems to feel the same way. She’s pretty sure that makes it okay.)

 

 

 

They have sex for the first time on a rainy Saturday night when his parents are out of town.

They don’t really talk about it beforehand much, but it doesn’t come as surprise – they’ve wanted it, she thinks, for a while now. They have a chemical attraction. They have an emotional one. She feels safe and comfortable and she wants it, in this way that she hasn’t wanted a lot of things in her life.

“My parents are going to visit Pedro this weekend,” he’d mentioned over lunch at school. “We should hang out.”

She’d said yes, and maybe then she knew what she wanted to happen, and maybe he did to, but they dare not mention it, like if they do it’ll suddenly go away.

(It doesn’t. She goes over to his house and they dance around it for a bit, watching a movie and holding hands and cuddling, and then something happens and prolonged eye contacts occurs, and suddenly… they’re kissing, and they’re switching the movie off, and she wants it so badly it’s almost scary.)

After, they’re sitting on the ground next to his bed, side by side, and her head is swirling, and she feels happy but also doesn’t know what to think, and it felt right but also like such a complete big move. And doesn’t know if it was the right one.

And she wonders if he is thinking the same thing. Or if he’s about to tell her that he regrets it.

He doesn’t, though. He sits up and puts and arm around her, and even if he says nothing she knows that it means something. She knows that it means something good.

Right then, she knows that she feels the exact same way.

 

 

 

She Skypes Bea the night after it happens. They Skype, and Hero tells her everything – about their friendship and the sex and the fact that she can’t get him out of her head – and it feels like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She hadn’t realized how not telling Bea about this giant part of her life was making her a little sad.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you would judge me. For falling for someone who was so terrible to me.”

“I wouldn’t judge you.”

“You’re judging me right now.”

Bea’s mouth twists a little bit, because she knows she’s been caught in the act. “I’m just wrapping my head around the whole thing. It’s weird.”

“The funny thing is that it’s actually not,” Hero says, but it’s not in a mean way; it’s in a, _no really, this is odd_ , voice.

“You have to give me a little time to get used to it -- I mean, you’ve had months. It seems sudden.”

“It’s not,” she sighs, sitting back. “I thought you would think I was dumb or naïve or depressed or something. I don’t know. And I didn’t want our whole group judging me for falling into his arms, or whatever.”

Bea shakes her head, with something like sympathy. “No one is going to judge you, at least not any of us.” She tries giving Hero a comforting smile, but it doesn’t really work. “It’s not like any of us actually know him that well, aside from what happened… we never made the effort to.”

Hero nods at this, because this is something she did as well. They were all basically told by the way that Pedro treated John that they didn’t have to care about him, and they all listened.

“If you like him, then he’s gotta be pretty great.”

Hero raises an eyebrow. “My track record isn’t exactly stellar.”

“Yeah, well,” Bea starts, looking down and laughing just a little bit. “I feel like things couldn’t get much worse than before. So, John only has room to go up.”

 

 

 

About a week before her birthday, Cora asks her what she wants to do, and Hero answers like a reflex.

“Nothing at all would be nice.”

Cora gives her a face, but Hero just nods her head. It’s not that her birthday as a whole has been entirely tainted forever – she’s not going to let that happen – but there is a bit of lingering bitterness. Not just about the event itself, really, but the lead up, the anticipation. That’s what killed it so much for her, Hero thinks (well, aside from Claudio being a complete and utter fucking shit), the way that she had built it up in her head, how it was something she was excited for a month in advance. She had made it out to be this great, fun experience that was going to be so happy – and then it was the worst.

Hero doesn’t need that again. She doesn’t need to be excited, at least not this year. Her mums are going to take her out for a nice dinner, and then she’ll probably read and drink a bottle of wine in her room. It sounds like a good evening to her. She considers inviting John, but decides against it, and he seems to agree: they’re infatuated, but this part is weird and messy, and they maybe don’t want to take it head on just yet. They make plans to go out for lunch the next day, and he says he’s getting her a gift, but that’s it. Her actual birthday is going to be her own.

Well, that’s the plan anyway.

 

 

 

The thing about Cora is that she’s really good at fooling people. She can take you off your tracks without you even noticing. It’s not really a bad thing – not like, a lying thing really, at least anymore – but it’s there. The Cora that you see on the surface isn’t necessarily the Cora that is real (which, Hero supposes, is true for everyone: you can look at a person and see what they offer to the public, and you’re only getting half of them, not even that sometimes; it’s easy to form a concrete opinion of someone when you don’t actually know them that well).

Cora is sometimes the nicest person she knows. She likes to seem like she doesn’t give a shit, and that she’s mean, and that she enjoys manipulating people. And that’s all true, but it isn’t the whole picture. Cora can be giddy and kind and nice. She can care so much when she wants to. And she sometimes wants to a lot.

Which is to say: on Hero’s birthday, her mums take her out for a nice dinner, and then they all go back and Hero sits down with a book and a bottle of wine, and that’s how the night is going, and it seems fine and normal and whatever, and then she gets this text:

_Dude, I think there’s like an ambulance outside your house. Better come to the front door and check it out._

The initial shock has her coming downstairs, more out of curiosity than anything else. Like she should have seen this coming, that Cora would do something for her. Because Hero knows all of Cora; she knows that she would do something like this.

But the this isn’t exactly what she was expecting either.

It’s Cora, and it’s John, and Cora’s Peter, but it’s also Verges and Dogberry, and Meg and Balthazar and Pedro, and Ursula, holding up a tablet where Bea and Ben are skyping. And they’re all smiling, and they’re all shouting surprise, and the girls are all running to hug Hero, and it actually feels really good, even if Hero can’t actually believe it, believe that Cora would get all these people to come down for this.

“You really didn’t have to,” she says when Cora comes over to hug her tightly, and she just smiles and shrugs.

“I thought we would take the anticipation out of it,” she says, beaming at Hero. “That way, you don’t have to worry and be freaked out at all. Is this okay?”

Hero laughs. “It’s actually kind of perfect.”

 

 

 

They end up having a little party on the beach, because it’s beautiful and kind of warm and also they’re a bunch of young people, and hanging out on the beach after dark with a couple of wine bottles seems pretty appealing. None of them actually go all the way in, but they dip their toes in and eat cake, and it’s all very lovely. It’s exactly the kind of thing she would want.

There are lots of hugs, lots of talking to people who she hasn’t seen and months and missed more than she thought she did. Hero thinks she sometimes feels like they aren’t as much a part of her life, because they all went off and did shit and she was stuck here, and in a way built her own new life. But they’re still her family, really. They did are so much of her. Hero is maybe starting to realize that just because their last year caused her so much pain doesn’t mean it wasn’t wonderful in some ways, because she got to spend it with her best friends, just like how this year was wonderful as well.

“How much did you know?” she asks John later on, when everyone else is dipping their toes in, and the two of them are hanging back by the picnic table.

“Bit and pieces,” he says, sitting down next to her. “I had actually wanted to do something before you said not to, but I thought I’d listen. Cora decided if she did something like this it would make you happy.”

“It did. I think I was just… I don’t know, afraid or something. Last year was kind of traumatizing, I guess.”

“Yeah.” He sighs a little bit, and she can tell he feels like shit. And god, it’s sometimes so weird to her. That he did that, and that a year ago he was that person (and that she was that person), and even more that it doesn’t bother her anymore. Or like, it does, but she’s still forgiven him. Because all of it… it was so toxic. They thought they were perfect, and actually there was stuff going around that was really bad, and she can look back and love parts and hate others.

And she knows that he never actually wanted to hurt her, even if he did a whole lot and even if she hated him for a while. And yes, there’s a bit of bitterness there – there’s always going to be bitterness there and a bit of anger and whatever else, but she doesn’t thinks that means that she can’t also love him. That she can’t see the darkness and know that it doesn’t make up all of him, and that he was in a terrible place then, and that he’s happier now. And maybe a part of her even likes the bad parts, because they make up part of who he is. And she doesn’t want half of John; she wants the whole package.

Hero shrugs her shoulders, looking out at the water. “I think I might love you.” They’ve never said those words, even if they’ve probably both known for a while that they’re true. _I love you_ means a whole lot more, but Hero’s pretty sure she wants it.

And John looks, and he smiles just a little bit, and he puts an arm around her, and she feels like he’s her person right now. In this moment, for this period, her and John are a pair. And it might not last forever, and they might look at on this and think, _we were young and naïve_ , but she doesn’t really care. For this period he is her person.

“I love you too.”

(Hero thinks she might be a fan of change.)

 

 

 

_fin._


End file.
